
Class 
Book. 



COPYRICHT DEPOSIT 



With the Compliments of J. W. P. Jenks. 



HUNTING IN FLORIDA 



1874. 



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Copyright, 1884. by J. W. P. Jenks. All rights rksetcved. 

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HUNTING IN FLORIDA. 



Though a native of Massachusetts, it was my fortune, at the 
age of thirteen, to enjoy squirrel, opossum and fox hunting in 
interior Virginia; at nineteen, cleer, 'coon and bear chasing in 
southwestern Georgia; at twenty-five, plover, duck and hawk 
shooting in southeastern New England ; at forty, a sight of wild 
chamois in the high Alps, and at fifty-five, a camp life of fifty 
consecutive days in the miasmatic swamps and everglades around 
Lake Okechobee in southern Florida. The object of this narrative 
is to give a detailed account of this latter experience in the most 
forbidding of all wild regions ; but to the naturalist a perfect 
elysium. 

The mention of Florida suggests the invalid, but should not in 
the case of myself or my t'^ee companions, the one an experienced 
collector of forty, inured to all the hardships of camp life, and 
recognized by naturalists as Doctor P., and the other two, youths 
of eighteen, inexperienced, but enthusiastic, whom we will call 
Erwin and Fred. 

For hunting-dress outfit, I was provided with a suit of sail-cloth, 
colored yellowish-brown or butternut, to resemble dead leaves, the 
sack-coat prepared with ten pockets, besides one, full size of the 
skirt, for large specimens, the pants with six pockets, two blue 
flannel shirts, with inside pockets for watch, money and photo- 
graphs, all wrapped in oil silk bags, (carefully keeping paper money 
from contact with the oil silk surface, by first enclosing it in an 
envelope,) military boots and brogans, and four pair of thick 
woolen socks. Any sort of vest is an incumbrance on hunting 
excursions. A huswife well provided with sewing materials, extra 
buttons, pieces of cloth in variety for mending garments aud 
dressing wounds, was not omitted. 



For obtaining game, and for camp constructing, I had a double- 
barreled breech-loader ; in the waist-belt on the left side, a large 
size revolver, and on the right side, a claw-hatchet with wrist- 
string in the handle ; sundry small traps, bunches of cord, insect- 
nets, etc. At least one breech-loading rifle should be in every 
hunting party. 

For preserving and transporting specimens, I found a tin knap- 
sack, constructed with various apartments for alcoholic vials, 
lunches, medicine-box and eggs, very convenient. At least ten 
gallons of alcohol and twenty pounds of arsenic were provided, 
besides some hundreds of muslin bags of different sizes, for keep- 
ing specimens distinct when thrown into one large jar. Convenient 
instruments, in duplicate, for skinning birds and animals and for 
blowing eggs, completed the general outfit. 

Two o'clock P. M., January 29, 1874, found myself and party 
steaming out of the harbor of P., in southern New England, 
bound direct to Savannah. A sudden fit of indigestion admonished 
Fred to seek cascading quarters, before we were fairly out of sight 
of land, whither I followed him in a short time. The Doctor and 
Erwin proved invulnerable, and greatly enjoyed our distress. 
How singular that of all the "ills that flesh is heir to," the most 
distressing never awakens a particle of sympathy from the uusuf- 
fering, but rather mirth and cruel hectoring. Happily for Fred 
and myself, we were booked for the same stateroom, to which 
having retreated, through the live-long night and succeeding day 
we were as sympathizing as the Siamese twins. On the third day, 
my sea-sickness fled more suddenly than it came, on hearing the 
cry on deck, "Porpoises ! porpoises ! all round." Hastening up, 
I found we were in a school of that species of Cetacea called 
Delphiuus delphis and quite unlike the common porpoise: This 
latter is often seen entering bays and even ascending large rivers 
for miles ; while Delphiuus rarely approaches' soundings. Looking 
from the deck of the steamer, I had an excellent opportunity for 
observing their swift motions, and the upward and downward 
movement of the tail, in contrast with its horizontal movement in 
fishes. At regular intervals they would rise to the surface to 
breathe through their single spiracle on the summit of the head ; 
but exhaliug and inhaling in au incredibly brief period of time. 
The hot air from the lungs, surcharged with moisture, is instantly 



condensed to vapor, giving- to the careless observer the appearance 
of spouting water, which none of the Cetacea ever do. Celebrated 
for their swiftness, they played around the vessel, changing their 
position from side to side, by sometimes passing under the bows 
and sometimes under the stern, but never disconcerted by the 
speed of the steamer, though plowing the waves at the rate of ten 
knots per hour. Both jaws are armed with numerous conical 
teeth, enabling them to feed upon the gregarious tribes of fishes. 
Robert L. Pell says " it commits great ravages among the enor- 
mous shoals of flying fish (exocoetus volitans), inhabiting the 
temperate latitudes, and it is a very remarkable fact that he nec- 
essarily seizes it as it endeavors to escape him, behind ; and were 
it not for provident nature, he could not swallow it on account of 
its wings. The moment, however, it enters his mouth, some internal 
management reverses the fish, and it passes down his throat head 
first. This cetaceous animal much resembles the porpoise, but 
has a longer snout and more slender body." In this quotation 
from the address of Mr. Pell, before the American Institute, May 
17, 1858, we suspect either he, or the reporter, rather mixed ac- 
counts, by confounding the cetacean Delphinus with the scale-fish 
Coryphsene, species of both genera being popularly called Dol- 
phins, though the former is a mammal and the latter a true fish. 
According to Captain Basil Hall, it is the Coryphaene that "com- 
mits great ravages among the flying tish," and an old whaler by 
my side fully confirms his account, but as confidently denies Mr. 
Pell's. Can any of nry readers testify to ever having seen any 
species of porpoise pursue and feast upon flying-fish? 

Delphinus delphis is regarded as the true Dolphin of the ancients, 
to which the Greeks paid divine honors, placing its image in their 
temples, and impressing it on their coins, though never actually 
imitating nature in their representations of it, but rather idealizing 
it, as embodying physical and moral perfections beyond those of 
the human race. 

At noon, we passed Cape Hatteras with a perfectl} 7 calm sea, 
very unlike some of my former passings of it in a sailing vessel 
in my youthful days. At 9 P. M. Sunday, we anchored in Tybee 
Sound, and at dawn proceeded up the Savannah River to the city. 
We conveyed our luggage across the city in a drenching rain, and 
started at 5 P. M. in the cars for a night ride of two hundred and 



fifty miles to Jacksonville. The contrast between the station and 
car accommodations of southern New England and southern 
Georgia was painfully striking. Toward dawn our train passed 
over the hard-fought battle-ground of Ohistee, where the Union 
troops were disastrously defeated in the late civil war. Antici- 
pating our arrival at the place, I had sought information among 
the passengers, and fortunately found one who was in the fight on 
the Southern side. To my eager inquiries, he pointed out the 
graves of the Union soldiers who fell in the battle and in the hasty 
retreat of their comrades were left on the field, and I knew that 
there lay two of my former pupils whose lives had been laid upon 
the altar of their country. Another, who commanded a company 
of cavalry in the fight, was taken captive on the retreat and 
thrown into prison, escaping only to die in a few weeks of the 
disease contracted during his prison-life. 

At 10 a. m. arrived at Jacksonville — four and one-half days 
from snow and ice, to orange groves laden with fruit. 

Making inquiries for best route to Lake Okechobee, I found it 
was a "terra incognita" to even Floridians. The publisher of a 
recent map of the State pointed to it with the remark, "It is said 
to be there, but I have never met one who has seen it. Should 
you find it and return, having escaped its miasma and reptiles, do 
not fail to give me a call, and verify or correct my map for the 
next edition." The papers were teeming with sensational stories 
about the wonders of the lake ; beautiful islands, on which are 
castle ruins, grassy plains and nondescript animals, among which 
latter were, "spiders of four pounds' weight!" I was also in- 
formed of a party, just a day or two in advance of me, bound for 
the lake by a western approach to it. This information at once 
decided me in favor of an approach from the east, and with only 
two days' delay in Jacksonville, I found myself and party on the 
little steamer " Lollie Boy" headed for Salt Lake, expecting to 
arrive there by 12 m. Saturday. 

To quote from the "Floridian Peninsula:" "Such entire 
ignorance of a body of water with a superficies of twelve hundred 
square miles, in the midst of a State settled nearly half a century 
before any other in our Union, which had been governed for years 
by Spanish, by English, and by Americans, well illustrates the 
impassable character of those vast swamps and dense cypresses 



known as the Everglades ; an impenetrability so complete as 
almost to justify the assertion of the State Engineer, so late as 
1855: 'These lauds are now, and will continue to be, as much 
unknown as the interior of Africa, or the mountain sources of the 
Amazon!'" The sequel of my narrative will show how com- 
pletely two months more sufficed, through the perseverance of two 
of my party, united to two others that subsequently joined them, 
together with my own independent efforts, to dispel the vagueness 
and even romance attending a knowledge of its existence. 

Though the area of the single State of Florida compares with 
that of New England in the ratio of 59 to 62, three-fourths of its 
surface is much of the year uuder water ; and this fact will largely 
account for the ignorance concerning its physical features. None 
but wild Indians, cattle-rangers and naturalists can be expected 
to wade through its swamps, risk its miasmata, and brave its dan- 
gerous animals. From the first two, little information can be 
expected, and the latter have but recently been attracted to its 
more inaccessible regions. 

The St. John's is an anomaly among rivers. Its source or sources, 
like those of the Nile, are still unknown. It flows a little west of 
north, till near its mouth, for at least three hundred miles, but 
with a change of level for that entire distance of uot more than 
six feet. Still it cannot be called a sluggish stream, which is all 
the more remarkable, " when it is considered that not an eminence 
in East Florida attains the height of two hundred feet;" aud 
where all the water comes from, to give for a hundred and lifty 
miles from its mouth an average breadth of about two miles, in 
apparent contradiction of all the hydraulic laws of physical geog- 
raphy, is the never-ceasing wonder, as day and night one steams 
over its ^surface. Ascending, the voyager traverses lake after 
lake ; some extensive enough to give a water horizon, and fully 
justifying the alleged meaning of the Indian name 11-la-ka, "a 
river of many lakes" ; though it may here be stated that an edu- 
cated Choctaw chief defined the name as meaniug, "it hath its 
own waj T , is alone contrary to every other;" a signification quite 
as pertinent to its physical character as the former. Its unnavi- 
gable portion seems to issue from an immense prairie covered 
with long saw grass, a region neighbor to the everglade and cul- 
minatino- hi it. The sreat rains of the summer are here collected 



as in a reservoir, till the low latitudinal water-shed is overflown, 
and the sources of the northern flowing St. John's are confounded 
with that of the southern flowing Kissimniee. After the annual 
great rain-fall is over, the running away of the waters reveals the 
submerged dividing line, and leaves the streams distinct, with an 
easterly and westerly water-shed of varying longitudinal width, 
but never extensive even in the driest seasons. Such an anoma- 
lous condition was long suspected by those engineers who had 
approximated the sources of both streams, but it was left to the 
observations of my part} 7 , so far as I know, to confirm the view, 
as will appear in the sequel. 

Nearing the wharf at Hibernia, a few miles above Jacksonville, 
I was, most agreeably surprised to find my life-long friend, the 
late Professor Jeffries Wyman, at whose house, in Cambridge, 
Massachusetts, I had dined a few days before, and whom I sup- 
posed still in New England. Forced b} r chronic complaints, he 
was spending his twenty-third-winter, if I remember rightly, in 
Florida, and as the event proved his last. Mitigating his tenden- 
cies to pulmonary disease by a southern winter, and to catarrhal 
by a White Mountain autumn, he had for nearly a quarter of a 
century alternated between the two extreme latitudes, and thus 
prolonged a most useful life, till in the issue he left behind a rep- 
utation that established him in the line of Comparative Anatomy 
as the peer of Agassiz and Owen. 

At the moment of embarking on the little steamer, two ladies 
came on board whose ways at once suggested the "school-marm." 
When informed by the clerk that every stateroom was already 
assigned, he was taken all aback by the reply, "Oh, any of these 
gentlemen will sleep on the saloon floor, just for one night." On 
hearing this remark, my first impulse was to put myself outside 
of that crowd at once. But observing that none of the younger 
passengers responded favorably to the appeal, I volunteered the 
half of my room, and induced the Doctor to give up the other 
half. Without a single "thank you" in reply, we were speedily 
dispossessed, and not possessed again, each day of the voyage 
proving so charming to the "ladies" that they concluded tore- 
main aboard and return to Jacksonville with the boat. Gallantry 
however had its reward, though at the expense of a hard couch 
for successive nights. 



The steamer stopping the second day for an hour at Volusia to 
" wood up," an opportunity was afforded for examining the shell 
mound upon which the village is built. It is formed exclusively 
of fresh-water species, mainly Ampullarias and Paludinas with 
some Unios, as are all the mounds upon the river from a few miles 
above its mouth, and has evidently resulted from being the dwel- 
ling-place of some of the earliest inhabitants during the successive 
stages of its formation, and the casting away of the shells, after 
extracting their contents for food. Professor Wyman, than whom 
no archaeologist has given more attention to their investigation, 
speaks with great confidence of their pre-Indian origin. My brief 
stay resulted iu unearthing a few pieces of pottery, at varying 
depths, and in determining the river line of the mound to be at 
least one hundred feet, with a height of six or eight feet, and of 
an uncertain extent inland, owing to the forest growth on the 
top of it. 

The shell mounds of Florida, whether upon the coast or the 
banks of its rivers, and especially those abounding upon the St. 
John's from near its source to its mouth, must not be confounded 
with the sand or burial mounds no less abundant, but scattered 
all over the State, and giving no evidence of ever having been used 
for dwelling-places. In the fourth memoir of the Peabody Acad- 
emy of Science, Vol. 1. 1875, Professor Wyman lias presented in 
a volume of about one hundred pages quarto, finely illustrated, 
the result of his researches and conclusions, in respect to forty- 
eight fresh-water shell mounds on the banks of the upper St. 
John's, and to which the reader is referred for the most complete 
account hitherto published of these most interesting relics. 

Our nights upon the St. John's were moonless, but the darkness 
did not prevent at least one side issue up a narrow creek, for an 
hour, to leave provision stores and whiskey, at the camp of a 
woodman. As we threaded our way in the Cimmerian gloom with 
interlacing branches overhead, and sometimes sweeping the upper 
deck, the wild fowl were startled from their slumbers, and the 
owls roused to a vigorous protest against the invasion of their do- 
mains. But the lynx-eyed pilot, who successfully steered his way 
along the tortuous channel with not even the friendly glare of a 
lantern at the bow, was to me the greatest wonder of the excur- 
sion. 



8 

Again in the St. John's, we found ourselves at daylight nearing 
a bluff, where we left Professor "Wyrnan and his annual camping 
companion, G. A. Peabody, Esq., of Salem, Massachusetts. To 
their great disgust, a squatter had taken possession of their old 
camping-site, and already erected a log-house in the orange-laden 
grove. Appearing at the door with rifle in hand, he saluted the 
oZd-comers with " How d'ye, gen'lmen, come to squat here?" 

In the afternoon another side issue to the left took us into Lake 
Beresford to leave another squatter, who had migrated from 
Georgia, and at a venture was being landed in a swamp with a 
wife and several children between the ages of two mouths and 
twelve years. As their scanty furniture was handed out and the 
family left on the beach in the rain, with no shelter, and miles 
away from any human sympathizers, three hearty cheers were 
given by their departing fellow-passengers for the American pluck, 
male and female, that ever adapts itself to physical surroundings, 
however forlorn the prospect. 

Once more on the St. John's, we found its breadth steadily nar- 
rowing, till it was reduced to less than two hundred feet, — an ad- 
vantage to the hunters on board, of which they were not slow to 
avail themselves, in popping away at every alligator and large 
bird that appeared at short or long range. Soon, however, the 
banks recede again and suddenly, as the steamer enters Lake 
Monroe, an expanse of water covering an area of at least twenty 
square miles. This crossed, the bluffs on either side are well- 
studded at advantageous points with shell mounds till the last 
great lake upon the river is sailed over, and the region of water, 
prairie and swamp is fully reached. At high water it makes little 
difference, in this region, whether the steamer keeps the channel 
or not, her sailing course well illustrating the piinciple of " cut- 
ting across lots." At half stage, as we found it, the channel was 
sufficiently disclosed to be followed, and equally well illustrated 
the doubling track of a hare with the hounds close at his heels. 
For a bird to rise from one side with the intention of proceeding 
but a short distance up or down stream, and alighting on the other 
side, and succeed twice in succession, would establish its claim to 
something of intelligence considerably superior to instinct. At 
length, growing weary of the monotony, I proposed to the captain 
to set me ashore and let me have a hunt of a hundred yards across 



the base of a peninsula, while the steamer was doubling it at fifty 
times tbat distance. " Will you risk the snakes, alligators and 
quicksands," was the squelching reply. 

Leaving the St. John's, a few miles of navigation through Snake 
River, still more tortuous in its windings, and whose abrupt turn- 
ings often required the boat hands to jump ashore and push the 
bow round with poles, brought us into Salt Lake, so called from 
the saline taste of its water, a phenomenon as yet unexplained. 
Our voyage was terminated on the opposite side of the lake, by 
grounding the boat an eighth of a mile from the shore. A scow 
came off for us, having on it four cords of wood for the steamer. 
As our captain was supplied, he declined taking it, and so our 
luggage to the amount of as much greater weight was piled on 
the wood, besides fifteen or twenty passengers, and the scow 
pushed off. Half-way to the shore it grounded, and then the 
boatmen exclaimed, "Why, here is just where it grounded going 
out." A fair specimen of "Cracker" calculation, of which this 
was our first, but by no means our last lesson. With the ground- 
ing of the scow, a race commenced on the part of the mule and 
ox-teams waiting for us on shore, to see which should reach us 
first to secure a load of goods and passengers for Sand Point, on 
the Atlantic coast, six miles distant. When they reached us the 
cart-bodies were just even with the top of the water. For my 
party I selected a single mule team. For the bridle, a cord passed 
through the mouth and over the top of the head. Another single 
cord to the driver on the bare back, answered for a rein. A 
leathern band supported the thills, and a collar made of straw, 
with wooden hames and short chains, completed the harness. Had 
the traces been of rawhide, the whole arrangement would have 
been unique as a specimen of thriftlessness. Having packed on 
our baggage of eight hundred pounds, with two of us on top to 
balance it, we started for the shore, apparently better able to 
carry the little mule than it to draw us. The intervening six 
miles gave us our first Florida lesson in walking. Midway we 
passed a large sand burial mound, from the top of which Professor 
Wyinan had exhumed a skeletou buried only a foot deep, though 
six feet below pieces of charcoal and decayed bones were discov- 
ered. 

While still in the woods, our teamster commenced unloading at 

2 



10 

a hut constructed in part of logs, and in part of frame-work 
covered with boards split out by hand. 

" Is this Sand Point?" I inquired. 

"This is Sand Point." 

" But where is the ocean?" 

"A mile and a 'af, further on." 

" Were you not to take us to the ocean, where we could find a 
sail-boat ?' ' 

"You bargained for Sand Point, and this house is where the 
Post Office used to be. To go to the wharf will cost you a dollar 
more." 

" Did you not know when the bargain was made, that we ex- 
pected you to take us to the shore?" 

"A bargain's a bargain, and if you want me to take you to the 
shore, I will come to-morrow night or Monday morning, and do 
it for another dollar." 

Here, then, was our first lesson in "Cracker" honesty. The 
captain of the boat having sent us ashore in the wilderness, fifteen 
minutes before dinner, when our appetites were well whetted up 
for a bountiful repast, and which our walk of six miles had not 
in the least diminished, we concluded to dismiss our honest team- 
ster and stop over Sunday at the hut yclept in the guide-book, 
Sand Point Hotel. 

The next day, inquiring for a church, was informed by mine 
host of a Sabbath School recently started in a school-house not 
far distant, he had " hearn tell of," but had never seen. Thread- 
ing my way along a cow-path, I came upon the building, just as 
the school of six pupils and two teachers, one of whom was my 
honest teamster of the day before, was assembling. The floor 
was of rough boards, the apertures for light without glass, and 
the long benches without backs, but the Bible was in the building 
and the tender youth were taught its sacred truths. Outside of 
my own tent it was my last recognized Sabbath for seven weeks. 

Seeking negotiation for a sail-boat, to take us a hundred miles 
further south by the Indian River to Fort Capron, the first boat- 
man presenting himself was so under the influence of liquor that 
he was almost incoherent, though profuse in praises of his boat 
and his skill in managing it ; and by way of recommending him- 
self to us, declared he was the Indian River correspondent of 



11 

"The Forest and Stream." Having declined his services, we 
fortunately secured the best boatman and boat on the river. 

Betime Monday morning, we had our luggage stowed upon the 
sail-boat, and commenced a voyage of one hundred miles further 
south upon the Indian River, a misnomer for an interior sea or 
rather lagoon, running parallel with the Atlantic Ocean and con- 
necting with it b} 7 infrequent inlets. Its salt water abounds in 
innumerable varieties of fish, while the shores on either side are 
no less attractive to the sportsman. In some places, the banks 
recede from each other four or five miles, in others not more than 
fifty yards. Oyster-bed reefs obstruct navigation for vessels larger 
than common sail-boats, but channels might be easily dredged 
across them for the passage of a small steamer, and thus open this 
more auspicious region of Florida to the tourist and invalid. 

Anxious to reach our most southern point of destination, we 
restrained ourselves from capturing either fish, reptile, bird or 
mammal, though the temptation was constantly presented ; es- 
pecially when, to reef sail, we ran into the mouth of St. Sebastian 
River, and saw upon the beach fresh tracks of deer, wild-cats, and 
pumas. At sundown we anchored hard by the hut of our boat- 
man's brother-in-law, in which we found shelter and repose, though 
not upon beds of down, but rather of dried hides. The larder 
furnished venison steak and hominy for supper and breakfast, be- 
sides the inevitable pork and yam of a " cracker's " repast. 

The western shore at this point preseuts geological features of 
remarkable interest. That portion ordinarily washed by the waves 
presents a bluff, six to eight feet in height, formed apparently of 
fragments of shells cemented into firm rock by pressure or heat, 
but honey-combed with cylindrical orifices six to fifteen inches in 
diameter extending perpendicularly from the surface of the bluff 
to a line corresponding with the level of the beach at low-water 
mark. The appearance is as though a sudden overflow of the 
waves had deposited a mass of broken shells to the depth of ten 
feet, more or less, around the closely growing trunks of an exten- 
sive grove of palmetto trees ; and then, the shelly mass having 
consolidated ere the trees had decayed, the moulds of the trunks 
remain, a geological wonder. The same foundation structure is 
said to extend inland beneath the soil to an unknown distance, 
having been tested a half mile from the shore, and only kept de- 



12 

nuded on and near the beach by the more powerful action of occa- 
sional storms. The geologic explanation of this unique feature 
is a desideratum. 

Between watching the "looming" of distant " points " ahead and 
astern, the " sailing" of pelicans and the "breaking" of huge 
sharks, at times almost under the bow of the boat, the hours of the 
second day whiled away, till at 4 p. m. we landed at Fort Capron, the 
projected base of our swamp operations. Stepping from the boat, a 
Yankee explorer bound also to Lake Okechobee, grasped my hand, 
and in a trice told me that he had brought out a sail-boat all the 
way from New York City, with the intention of having it carried 
across the country, sixty miles, by an ox-team, to fort Bassinger, 
on Kissimee River, down which he proposed to navigate till it 
should usher him into the lake, and, moreover, he was only wait- 
ing to make up a party of four, having already secured one. Here 
was a dilemma. The addition of my party would make the num- 
ber six, while the utmost capacity of his boat would accommodate 
but four. It was, however, quickly decided that we should all go 
to the river together, and then mature our plans according to cir- 
cumstances. To secure the services of an ox-team and a driver, 
the "Explorer" and Erwin volunteered a tramp of ten miles to 
the cabin of a " cracker " who was understood to be able to fur- 
nish the team. On their return the following day they reported 
themselves successful, and Saturday fixed upon as the date of our 
departure, the " cracker" engaging to take the boat and all lug- 
gage to the river at the point designated for forty dollars. 

Meanwhile in-door accommodations were furnished us at Fort 
Capron by " mine host " Judge P., to whom 1 had a letter of in- 
troduction from a former pupil. Erwin and Fred, at the sugges- 
tion of Doct. P., commenced initiating themselves into camp-life, 
by erecting their tents in the yard. I donned my hunting-suit and 
commenced collecting, not a little encouraged in that my first seven 
shots were each successful in securing the game. 

As the day of our departure drew near, I was informed that we 
should pass through a settlement of outlaws, ten miles distant, 
every man of whom had left his native region for that region's 
good, and located himself outside of " law and gospel " just over 
the frontier line of civilization. The owner of our team was ac- 
counted a leader among them, and by way of cautioning me, my 



13 

informant related, under the promise of secrecy, the particulars of 
a murder, within three weeks, by two of the gang, of an honest, 
industrious German, who had made for himself a home just out- 
side of their settlement. He, being a man of education and some 
degree of refinement, not affiliating with them, and withal being 
envied the possession of a better orange plantation than they had, 
though wholly the result of his owu industry, it was decided to get 
rid of him on the damning charge of being a stealer and killer of 
cattle. Among Floridian " crackers " this is a far more heinous 
crime than that of taking human life, and once fastened upon a 
man, if only on suspiciou, immediately puts him out of the protec- 
tion of such law as may exist. Finding their victim could not be 
driven away, their usual resort to treachery was adopted, and the 
deed committed to two desperate ruffians, one a young man of 
nineteen, whom we will call Tom, and who will figure largely in 
the sequel of this narrative. To him, as the story was told me, 
our team owner promised his daughter in marriage, if successful. 
At first, every effort was made to provoke a quarrel that should 
give some shadow of an excuse for the execution of their plot ; 
but the imperturbably good nature of the honest German would 
not beguile him into a dispute. At length under the pretense of 
desiring some orange-slips from his excellent grove, they called 
at his cabin and asked for dinner. Both dinner and slips were 
cheerfully given them, and then requesting their host to set them 
across the deep creek about a quarter of a mile from his house, he 
went with them for the purpose, but did not return. Soon after 
leaving, his wife heard four gun and three pistol shots in quick 
succession : but surmising they were fired at game, waited till near 
dark for her husband's return, and then repaired to the creek, 
ouly to be horrified with the sight of blood in the boat still securely 
fastened on the other side. It was subsequently proven that the 
assassins thought to cover up the evidence of their guilt by drag- 
ging the body a half mile below, and thrusting its dismembered 
fragments into alligator holes. The wife, snatching up her young 
child, traversed the gloomy wilderness for ten miles, at the dead 
of night to Fort Capron and reported the deed. The following 
week the sheriff of the county with a posse of ten men, started 
for the settlement with the intention of arresting the guilty par- 
ties. When within five miles of it he was met by a delegation in- 



14 

forming him' that his design was known, and the whole neighbor- 
hood was assembled in one cabin with plenty of arms and pro- 
visions, and ready to endure a siege, but no one could be arrested 
while a man or woman remained alive. Under these circumstances 
and considering " discretion the better part of valor," the sheriff 
beat a hasty retreat. Thus the matter stood two weeks subsequent, 
as I was about to enter the community, my informant closing up 
his narration with the remark that he had felt it his duty to let me 
know the character of those to whom I was about to trust myself 
and my party, but cautioned me on no account to breathe a sus- 
picion of any one or reveal the secret to either of my companions, 
lest it might be suspected by the outlaws that we had some knowl- 
edge available to the government, and, on the principle that 
" dead men tell no tales " find our last resting place in concealed 
alligator holes, even if their cupidit}? should permit us to return 
from the swamp after they had fleeced us to the extent we might 
permit. Forewarned, forearmed, I the more persistently deter- 
mined to penetrate the nrystery and walk the strand of Lake Oke- 
chobee. 

Saturday, punctually at 12 o'clock, our teamster appeared with 
two yoke of steers attached to a double set of shaky wheels. In 
an hour or two the boat was launched upon the axles and loaded 
with our provisions of coffee, homin} 7 , hard-tack and pork ; our 
ammunition, of powder and shot ; our preserving materials, of 
salt, arsenic and alcohol (the latter poisoned, lest the teamsters 
should be tempted to try the preserving of themselves with it) ; 
our capturing apparatus, of fish-nets, insect-nets, etc., (guns, pis- 
tols and hatchets are on such trips to be a constant appendage of 
the person) ; beside the camera and necessary chemicals of the 
" Explorer" for procuring pictures of the ruins said to be in the 
Lake. When ready to start, I saw plainly that the weight was 
too much for the wheels, and predicted a break-down, to which, 
however, no other one of the party would listen. 

The cabin of the teamster lay upon the direct route to the lake, 
ten miles distant, where we expected to make our first encamp- 
ment. All went well till we entered the bordering swamp of Five 
Mile creek, when, after wading deeper and deeper for half a mile, 
and the oxen were just ready to plunge in all over for a swim 
across the channel, crash went one of the wheels. There was no 



15 

alternative but to wade back to dry land and camp without our 
tent. Fortunately, our provisions and cooking utensils were on 
the top of the load, and, by judicious distribution of the weight, 
easily borne back. From a stagnant pool near our camping place 
we obtained water for our coffee, after frightening away from the 
margin the lizards, etc., and then straining it to get rid of the 
smaller nuisances, both vegetable and animal. Rolled up in our 
blankets, we composed ourselves to sleep with clouds of mosqui- 
toes settling down upon every exposed spot of flesh, and amid 
the hooting of owls and the howling of wild beasts, having just 
before the break-down crossed the fresh track of a puma. To 
repair the damage there was no alternative but for the teamster 
and his driver to push on with the oxen to his home and return 
as soon as a new set of wheels could be procured. At noon, on 
Monday, he reappeared with a stouter set, for which he had mean- 
while made an entirely new axle. Transferring the load, the old 
wheels were left in their tracks, where five weeks later they still 
remained. Reaching the bank of the creek, it was found that 
neither oxen nor wheels could touch bottom. To effect a cross- 
ing, the leading yoke was taken off, and swum over, and so placed 
on the opposite shore as to be quickly hitched on again. The 
driver stripped naked, as well as the Explorer and Erwin, the 
former to swim at the heads of the oxen at the risk of being gored 
in their wild plunges, the other two to swim astern and guide the 
boat against the current . The moment the steers got foothold on 
the opposite bank, they refused to move, leaving the wheels sink- 
ing in the quicksands and the boat rising from the axles. It was 
a critical moment, but the leaders being hitched on and a simulta- 
neous shout raised by all, a "long pull and a strong pull alto- 
gether" landed the boat on the bank and relieved our anxiety. 
Five miles further brought us to the clearing of our " teamster." 
Selecting a place for a camp, I went on alone to a well near the 
cabin, and observed two men dressing a hog hung to the limb of 
a tree. Coming suddenly upon them around a corner of the cabin, 
I noticed that the younger of the two instantly dropped his work 
and rushed for the cabin door, out of which he soon issued with 
a double barreled gun in his hand, and stood defiant. Apparently 
not noticing him, I passed back to my companions, wondering at 
his behavior. Soon our Teamster took me aside and asked why I 



16 

wore a pistol-belt with U. S. on the buckle. I told him I had 
borrowed it from my cousin, who was color-bearer of his company 
during the late war. kk Then you are not a United States Mar- 
shal?" To me the idea was so ridiculous I could not restrain my 
laughter, and he returned to his cabin. Subsequently I learned 
that the young man was " Tom," and the United States belt with 
its pistol on one side and chtw-hatchet on the other, together with 
the gun in my hand, had aroused his suspicion that I had come 
with a posse in disguise for his arrest. " The criminal doth fear 
each bush an officer." Spreading our tent and smoking out the 
mosquitoes with pine knots, Fred and myself slept soundly with 
the expectation of rising at daylight to renew our trip to the lake. 

In the morning we were told by our Teamster that the load was 
twice as heavy as he promised to carry, and he should go no fur- 
ther unless it was reduced one-third at least, and he was paid sixty 
dollars instead of forty. Lesson second in "Cracker" honesty. 
Fred and myself volunteered to remain, while Doctor P. and Erwin 
insisted upon advancing. Assuring Erwin I should see the lake 
before leaving Florida, if health permitted, he still chose to take 
his risk with the Explorer, alleging that he left New England with 
that sole object in view, and now saw no other certainty but to go 
with the boat. Poor fellow, he went on, and he saw the lake, and 
circumnavigated it, but while lying on his back most of the time 
for five weeks, shaking with fever and ague, hardly firing his gun 
during the whole trip. Of all this I was happily ignorant till I 
found him on my return from the swamps at Fort Capron, unable 
to walk across the room. 

Just before they were ready to start, the Teamster came to me 
and said he had in the woods another pair of steers that six 
months before had been yoked. These Tom would catch and with 
a light cart take the luggage of Fred and myself on the morrow, 
and carry us too, except in the deepest wading-places. By fol- 
lowing their wheel-tracks, and with a lighter load, we should easily 
overtake them. Besides, he had learned from a neighbor during 
the evening that Fort Bassinger was not more than ton miles from 
the lake ; moreover, this same neighbor had left a boat at the fort, 
in which he would take Fred and myself to the lake and back to 
the fort in one day, while the oxen were resting. Then we would 
return to his cabin together, and let the rest of the party pursue 



17 

their plan of exploring the lake. For this service he must receive 
four dollars per day, including Tom's wages, who was at work for 
him. The plan seeming feasible, I concluded to adopt it, and 
after much persuasion obtained Tom's consent, who was not yet, 
as I afterwards learned, entirely free from the suspicion of my 
being a United States officer sent to arrest him. 

After frivolous delays of several hours, Tom started for the 
woods and toward night drove into the enclosure a '•'bunch" of 
cattle having one of the steers wanted. In singling this one out 
with the lasso, it leaped the fence and was quickly out of sight 
again. He must now go a mile and get a neighbor, who, by the 
way, was his reputed companion-assassin, and the twain go two 
miles in another direction and borrow some dogs, with which to 
catch the runaway steer. About ten at night, they passed my 
tent, Tom ahead on a horse, holding one end of a rope around 
the horns of the steer ; his companion on foot, holding on to a 
rope around one hind leg of the animal, which had been caught 
by the nose with bloodhounds. The next morning the woods were 
again scoured for the other steer, which was brought in similarly 
about noon. An inspection of the cart decided, in the mind of 
Tom, that the wheels were too weak, and he must borrow a pair 
from a neighbor some eight miles away. This he would do next 
day and be ready to start Friday morning, three days behind 
time. Yielding at length to my remonstrances, he started soon 
after dinner to exchange the wheels and break in the wild steers, 
returning past midnight. In the morning, the last caught steer 
was utterly exhausted, and the third day of delay must after all 
be spent in hunting up and breaking in another. Friday morning 
we started, the first essay of the wild creatures being to upset the 
load in their zig-zagging through " a right smart palmetery" — 
rough palmetto-roots above ground. 

The log cabin of our Teamster was double, the two rooms being 
connected by a thoroughfare. But it was a palace in comparison 
with all the other residences in the settlement. A mile on our 
way, we came to the cabin of Tom's companion-assassin, consist- 
ing of a single room made of logs loosely piled upon each other, 
in which dwelt a family of four. A track of loosely scattered 
feathers leading from a sapling close by the cabin to the swamp 
indicated where a wild cat had dragged away a hen the previous 



18 

night, snatching it from within two feet of the heads of the sleep- 
ing inmates. A mile further on we reached the shelter of Tom's 
father's family. It was a roof of palmetto leaves, supported on 
posts, the four sides entirely open to the air. Here dwelt the 
father and mother, two grown-up sons, two grown-up daughters, 
and four younger children. A short distance beyond we swam a 
creek, just narrow enough to save the cart from going to the bot- 
tom before the steers gained footing on the other side. Hard by 
we passed the last evidence of ' l Cracker" life, consisting of a 
shelter of boughs in the form of one-half of an A tent, beneath 
which a hermit had slept for live years. Soon, the trail pursued 
thus far ended, and following the wheel-tracks of our predecessors 
we struck the Alligator Flats, aud during the rest of the day, mile 
after mile, waded axle-deep in the mud and water. Instead of 
riding on the cart, as was promised us, we were in constant fear 
of our oxen giving out from sheer weakness, so that Fred and 
myself carefully avoided adding even the weight of our guns to 
the load, though Tom did not hesitate to mount his burly form 
upon the cart- tongue most of the time, pretending that he could 
discern the guiding track beneath the water better by looking down 
upon it. As the deadly poisonous moccasin-snake, more to be 
dreaded than the terrible rattlesnake, abounded in the flats, and 
frequently rose up within six feet of us, throwing themselves into 
a striking attitude and displaying their crooked fangs in fearful 
warning, we plodded most of the time 'behind the cart, that the 
splashing of the oxen might frighten away the reptiles. At 
length, in the greater depth of the water and thickness of the 
grass, Tom declared himself unable to distinguish the cart-ruts, 
and it became necessary for Fred and myself to go before and 
indicate the guiding tracks by each taking one and beating it out 
with our feet. Thus we passed hour after hour constantly whip- 
ping the water with long sticks to frighten away the snakes, though 
occasionally chilled with the sight of a moccasin gliding off a 
tussock of grass and concealing himself, neither could tell where. 
Towards sundown we came to a pine island a few feet in diameter, 
with just enough of dry land for our fire, aud Tom to lie down 
beside it. Beyond, being one stretch of water as far as the eye 
could reach, we haul up, turn the oxen out to feed, bake our yams, 
barbecue our meat, curl up on the top of our luggage in the cart 
and go to sleep winking at the stars. 



19 

The next clay is but a repetition of the previous, only the wad- 
ing is deeper and the wriggling snakes ore more numerous. " Fa- 
miliarity," however, " breeds contempt," even in the matter of 
exposure to the cold, clammy touch of a snake and danger from 
its deadly fangs, as well as in dissimilar experiences of human 
nature, — a contempt leading Fred and myself to often ease our 
blistered feet by throwing our high-topped boots upon the cart 
and substituting brogans, or even going barefoot. 

A distinguishing feature of these water-prairies is an occasional 
stretch of cypress-clumps — clusters of trees presenting beautiful 
rounded outlines, very appropriately termed tk Blue Mountains." 
Their attraction, however, is entirely upon the outside, and in the 
far distance. Approached, their blending foliage separates to the 
view and becomes scragged, while their bases are sunk in a most 
forbidding morass. Through such a "cypress-slue" we forced 
our way, and emerged upon a clear, open prairie, where we 
camped for the night. Crossing this, we found ourselves during 
the forenoon of the third day entering an old military trail and 
on solid ground. Surmising that we must be near the fort, Fred 
at 11 o'clock pushed forward, and I saw no more of him till sun- 
down, when he returned and reported an interminable prairie 
three hours in advance and no signs of the Kissimmee. Not much 
like overtaking the advance party, we thought ; but there was no 
alternative, and while we were deliberating what was best to do 
on the morrow, the double-yoked team hove in sight on its return, 
having that morning left the "Explorer" and his party at Fort 
Bassinger as agreed, but found the fort sixty miles from the lake, 
instead of ten. Nor was there any neighbor's boat at the deserted 
fort, the Indians having probably stolen it, etc., etc. The truth 
now flashed upon my mind, and I needed no more proof that the 
" teamster's" story was manufactured for the purpose of alluring 
me on to secure his four dollars per day. Lesson third in 
"Cracker" honesty. 

Our encampment for the night was near a ereek whose bed was 
dry, but in which our Teamster affirmed lie had sometimes found 
water flowing south, and at other times north, according as the 
region on either side of the east and west trail had received more 
abundant supplies of rain. A careful observation of the whole 
region fully convinced me that here we find in the wet season one 



20 

(perhaps the most southern) of the many afflueuts of the mighty 
St. John's. So little, however, is the change of level that out of 
the same reservoir, and by the same channel, there heads, at 
times, another creek taking a southward direction into St. Lucie 
Sound, and on the northwest border of the same reservoir is found 
issuing at high water an affluent of the Kissiramee, by whose 
channel a portion of the waters of this same great central reservoir 
find their way into Lake Okechobee, from whose more exposed 
surface excessive evaporation is constantly going on. This opinion 
is sustained by the rain charts of the Smithsonian Institute, which 
" show that the peninsula of Florida is the region in which the 
rain-fall is heaviest east of the Rock}' Mountains, and further, 
that in the peninsula itself the curves of the greatest rain encroach 
upon the head waters of the St. John's, though still more upon 
those of the rivers flowing south into Lake Okechobee, and west 
into the Gulf of Mexico." 

Fred and myself had hardly erected our tent when it began to 
drizzle, with indications of abuudant rain, but fortunately for us, 
not realized. Ere we slept, a brother of the Teamster appeared 
from beyond the Kissimmee with his mother, wife and seven chil- 
dren ranging in age from three weeks to twelve years, all riding in 
a cart drawn by a single yoke of oxen. Two of the older children 
were shaking with the fever and ague, to whom my prescriptions 
of quinine brought speedy relief. The children found shelter dur- 
ing the night beneath the cart, while the adults lay down upon the 
damp ground, wrapped in blankets. Long before light we were 
cooking our breakfast, preparatory to an early start, when a de- 
mand was made upon our scanty store to feed the hungry mouths 
of the new comers — a hospitality we were poorly prepared to ex- 
tend, but which it was not in our heart to refuse, especially when 
pleaded for by the wistful looks of the little innocents. 

Relieving our jaded oxen, by transferring to our cart one yoke 
from the teamster's unladened wheels, it fell to me to handle the 
ropes and goad. So long as I kept in the rear of another team 
all went well ; but if I essayed to lead, my Yankee brogue was ut- 
terly unrecognized by the half-tamed creatures. Halting at noon 
beside a forsaken log-house, T amused myself with catching liz- 
ards, treetoacls and ant-lions, while Fred left his dinner half-eaten 
to bag a flock of Carolina parrots, the first aud only ones we met 



21 

in Florida. True to their reputation, curiosity to know what had 
happened to a fallen companion seemed to keep them lingering 
around till all were shot without the shooter hardly stirring from 
his first chosen position. There can be little doubt that this bird, 
once so abundant in all the Southern States, and even ranging into 
New York State, is fast becoming extinct east of the Mississippi 
River. After dinner, while waiting for our lazy teamsters to 
snooze, I still further amused myself with skinning a sandhill 
crane, in the midst of which operation rapid stinging sensations 
about the naked ankle, caused an investigation, only to reveal a 
centipede or scorpion amusing himself with my nervous system. 
The application of hartshorn to the half-dozen punctures reduced 
the swelling, and in two or three days I was no longer reminded 
of the insect that menaces with its head, but wounds with its tail. 
The monotony of the afternoon drive was varied about four 
o'clock with the cry of "turkeys ahead." Fred and Tom under- 
took the task of providing us with fowl for supper, and with such 
success as to bring in a bird apiece. Just as we were congratu- 
lating ourselves on something better than hog and hominy, a party 
of six more, parents and children all told, overtook us aud fas- 
tened themselves upon our party. The cracker's coach — the in- 
evitable ox-cart — bore four of them, while two rode ponies. Taught 
by the experience of the morning, the dreams of Fred and myself 
vanished, and we resigned ourselves to the thought of Utile more 
than sniffing the perfumes of the savory repast. The larder of 
the latest comers proved as lean as that of the earlier, and when 
all had partaken sparingly of the supper, the teamster declared 
that such as had horses, including himself, must push on at mid- 
night, and leave the rest on short allowance, to reach his home by 
sundown of the following day, as not more than a spoonful of 
hominy to each was left. On further consultation it was decided 
for all to start at light and make a few miles before breakfast. 
After a brief repast at the foot of a tree, our oxen were yoked and 
all fell into line. A wild-cat springing out of the path was soon 
overtaken by the dog, but instead of being held 'by the dog, it 
turned the scale and held the dog, till Tom came up and released 
its victim by a charge of buckshot. Skinning the cat at our next 
halt, and throwing the carcass into the low scrub, I was surprised 
to find both the Turkey Buzzard aud the Caracara eagle gathering 



00 



around it, in large numbers, in less than twenty minutes, though 
when tl\rown away there was not a bird in sight. 

Both in going out towards the Kissimmee and in returning, 
wherever the water had dried away upon the prairie, numerous 
hillocks of freshly-formed pellets of sand, five or six inches in 
height were observed. Digging beneath the hillocks would inva- 
riably discover a small cray-fish, that evidently maintained its 
home in the moist earth by keeping beneath the influence of 
drought. 

As we neared the home of the Teamster, Tom whispered in my 
ear, u we are going to have a party at our house to-morrow night," 
and as he said it, I observed a smile upon his countenance for the 
first time since we had met. 

Excursion No. 1 from our camping base on Ten Mile Creek 
proving fruitless, so far as seeing Lake Okechobee was concerned, 
and Fred being disinclined to spend any more time searching for 
it, I undertook the matter alone, and bargained with the team- 
ster — whom we will hereafter call Mr. J. — to provide me with a 
mule, and guide me at the beginning of the week to the Indian 
village some forty miles distant, and reputed to be in the vicinity 
of the lake. 

Our provisions being exhausted and one kind of shot, it was 
necessary for Fred to go to Fort Capron to replenish our larder 
and ammunition. We also hoped to receive letters, as we had 
heard nothing from home to this time. Tom's services were again 
secured, but this time as driver of a mule cart, which could, how- 
ever, only reach Hell's grocery, a mile short of the Post Office 
orocery, where our ammunition was stored. Under the disap- 
pointment of no letters for either of us, Fred undertook to carry 
by a tangled foot-path to Bell's grocery two bags of shot, five 
pounds of coffee, and a handless jug containing two quarts of 
suo-ar syrup for hominy, neither grocer having any sugar. A boat 
was at hand, but the boatman must have a dollar and a half for 
the mile of sailing ; nor would he help carry the load on land for 
less. Being ' ; Yankee" pluck against "Cracker" generosity, the 
former triumphed, but a kind Providence threw a man in his way 
soon after starting— probably one of the loungers about the gro- 
cery — who for fifty cents relieved Fred of a part of his load. 
. This deposited in the cart, it started homewards, while Fred made 



23 

a detour of three miles to get at another grocery five pounds of 
hominy and his single barreled gun he had Left there when first 
starting for the lake. In a little time the paper hominy-bag gave 
way, and the contents commenced marking his truck. In this 
exigency he remembered the big pocket in his hunting coat ex- 
tending over the whole back, and designed as a receptacle for 
game. Into this goes the remnant of the bominy and is saved. 
In swimming Five Mile Creek the jug of syrup rolled out of the 
cart and was left in the mud at the bottom. So all the delicacy 
we had for either coffee or hominy, we hadn't. 

While Fred was gone I skinned a pair of coons, male and female, 
both secured at one shot. The male had marks of great age, and, 
judging from his mutilated ears, must have been a hard fighting 
character in his youth. One bone had also been broken square 
off, and no surgeon being at hand to reduce the fracture, it had 
healed with the two ends lapping, through contraction of the 
muscles. 

As suggested by Tom, towards sundown of the day following 
our return I observed men, women and children gathering at the 
cabin, mostly on foot, but some on horseback and others in ox. 
carts. At length a man rode up of graver mien and with horse 
more richly caparisoned than any other I had seen. Soon Mr. J* 
brought him to my tent, and taking me aside, said, tl This man is 
a justice of the peace, and has come sixty miles to marry Tom to 
my daughter to-night, but there is a hitch in the arrangement, as 
the last week's mail has failed to bring the license sent for. Now 
what do you advise, as the justice cannot wait two weeks for 
another mail, and my neighbors for ten miles around are all 
gathered to witness the ceremony?" As the malfeasance would 
be wholly on the part of the justice, inasmuch as should he per- 
form his part with their consent, they would be legally married to 
all intent and purpose, it was finally decided that Mr. J. and Tom 
should give the justice a written obligation, with myself as witness, 
to send him the certificate as soon as possible, which document 
they both signed by making their mark, after I had assured them 
it was written correctly. Nothing further hindering, Tom and 
his bride took position on the platform connecting the two rooms 
of the log cabin, while the justice pronounced them, without any 
questioning or pledging, husband and wife. Tom had exchanged 



24 

his teaming suit for a similar one, only more cleanly, and his bride 
contented herself with plain calico without ornaments of any kind, 
but with shoes and stockings — the tirst time I had seen her wear 
any. After the ceremony, the bride's mother and grandmother 
stepped up and shook hands without kissing, and were followed 
by her father without coat or vest, shoes or stockings, but with 
shirt-sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and his pants to his knees. 
After a long pause, I considered it my turn to shake hands with 
them, though, with all my knowledge of their antecedents, and at 
how fearful a price Tom had gained his bride, I could hardly bring 
my mind to congratulate them upon their union. The ice broken, 
there was a rush for handshaking, after which Mr. J. brought out 
a fiddle with two strings and called for dancing. Unable to aid 
in this part of the festivity, I soon retired to my tent, though 
disturbed till daylight with the music and toe-tripping. There 
might have been some whiskey-drinking, but it was not apparent, 
nor did I see any one inebriated, though Mr. J.'s prolouged efforts 
to extract music from the two-stringed fiddle had evidently over- 
taxed his nervous system and somewhat disguised him. During 
the forenoon the guests were scattered about the premises, sleeping 
off the weariness of the night, and by sundown all had departed, 
feven the guests from beyond the Kissimmee. It was, however, 
discovered that many equipments had changed hands, either in- 
tentionally, on the principle that "•exchange is no robbery," or in 
the confusion of a half-wakeful condition. My own premises 
were undisturbed except by the wandering hogs, whose long snouts 
thrust between my tent-coverings rooted me up, and interfered 
with my slumbers more than the squeaking of the fiddle. 

While waiting for Mr. .1. and Tom to sleep off the weariness of 
the wedding festivities, Fred and myself busied ourselves in pre- 
paring skins of such birds and animals as were vicinous to the 
camp, such as turkey-buzzards, brown-headed nut-hatch, hawks, 
lizards and snakes. While skinning the coons a buzzard alighted 
on a branch within twenty feet and patiently watched the opera- 
tion, expecting, no doubt, to feast upon the carcasses. ' His 
sauciness tempted my gun beyond endurance, and an off-hand 
shot quenched his appetite forever. Dropping into a mass of 
palmetto scrub, I requested Fred, who was cooking our supper, to 
bring him in, lest the hogs should appropriate him before I could 



25 

leave my work conveniently. Ever accommodating and respectful, 
he essayed to fulfil my request, but quickly returned, blurting out 
snappishly between the retchings of his stomach, " Go get the 
stinking thing yourself!" — the first and only impatient expression 
that fell from his lips in all our trip. It was his first experience 
of close proximity to the foul bird, while my childhood Virginia 
experience had made me familiar with its habits. Instantly sus- 
pecting the reason of his disgust, I forgave him in my heart his 
unintentional disrespect, and laughingly rallying him on the weak- 
ness of his stomach, picked up the bird myself and put it in a safe 
place from the hogs, notwithstanding the unsavoriness of the 
ejectious from its nostrils. 

The wily tl Cracker," Mr. J., having by this time concluded he 
had found the goose that lays a golden egg, began to tell of 
heronries a few miles away in different directions that would 
furnish us all the variety of birds and eggs we could desire. To 
test his word, Fred went with him the second day after the wed- 
ding to the nearest one, Mr. J. on horseback and Fred afoot. 
Five miles, most of the distance through water from ankle to 
kuee-deep, brought them to the heronry. It was a cypress-slue 
with tall trees, twenty-five feet or more in height to the lowest 
limbs, and thick undergrowth of bushes, ten to twenty feet in 
height. Most of the nests were in the trees, though some were 
in the tops of the bushes. By wading, in some places waist-deep, 
and climbing the bushes, Fred was able to secure twenty-seven 
eggs of the Snake-bird and White Heron. The bushes and nests 
were dripping with the excrements of the birds, giving Fred a 
second lesson in some of the unpleasant experiences of a naturalist. 
Stumbling ever an unseen slimy log, he dropped his gun, and in 
recovering that completed the drenching of all his garments. On 
his way out he had shot a Snake-bird and a White Heron, and 
left them to secure on his return. Arriving at the spot, a few 
feathers only were found — a dozen or more buzzards on the trees 
contiguous explaining the absence of the bodies of the game. 
Nearing the camp, he secured for me a ground rattlesnake, a 
species about two feet in length and much smaller than the diamond, 
but more venomous. One morning, shaking up my bed of pal- 
metto leaves, I noticed one of these reptiles crawling away from 
my couch. Wishing to secure one of the larger species, I offered 



26 

a ten-year-old son of a " Cracker" passing our camp a dollar if 
he would bring me one not less than four and a half feet in length. 
In less than fifteen minutes he returned, dragging at the end of a 
string fastened around his neck an adamanteus five and a half feet 
in length and seven inches girth, with ten rattles. Between rat- 
tlesnakes on the land and moccasins in the water, it became us to 
be ever on the alert. 

While making arrangements for the lake, Indian Charley, son 
of As-se-he-ho-lar or Osceola, the famous Seminole chieftain, 
happened to pass the camp. He wore a heavy turban on his 
head, a frock reaching half way to his knees, and moccasins on 
his feet. His skin had the genuine copper color of the wild In- 
dian, and his hair hung over his shoulders in long, raven-black 
locks. He had a deer slung ou his back, with a bundle of tanned 
deer-skins for trading. I learned from Mr. J. that the Indians 
first soak their deer-skins till the epidermis with the hair drops 
off, and then pound them in a wooden mortar with the brains of 
the deer to tan the skins and make them pliable. Charley acted 
very stupid, pretending that he could not understand us. Further 
acquaintance showed that this was only Indian caution before 
strangers, putting you off your guard till, by listening to your 
remarks in apparent indifference, they have made up their mind 
concerning you, and then relaxing or maintaining their stolidity, 
according to the impression you have given them, — a lesson in 
human nature their more enlightened white brethren might learn 
and practice with profit. 

Having become disgusted with our high-top boots and brogans 
for swamp travel, we importuned Charley to make each of us a 
pair of moccasins. Showing him paper money, he signified he 
would make a pair for a dollar, but would discount fifty per cent. 
for silver. Having, fortunately, the morning I sailed from the 
North exchanged at a bank twenty- five dollars in paper currency 
for silver, paying nine per cent, for the difference, specie payment 
not having been resumed, I now had the best opportunity afforded 
me for speculation 1 had ever experienced, — a gain by the tinder's 
own offer of forty-one per cent. ; and thus far I regard it as the 
silver-letter day of my life. The bargain struck, Charley unrolled 
his bundle of buckskins, measured my foot with a stick, and with 
only a knife and a bone awl, in half an hour made me a pair of 



27 

moccasins that did me excellent service for weeks afterward, and 
are now deposited in the museum of Brown University as a sample 
of utilitarianism respecting our pedal extremities ii were well a 
more boastful civilization should progress to, instead of torturing 
nature with cramping shoes, in obedience to a slavish servility to 
fashion and for the benefit of corn doctors. 

I learn that Mr. J. has the credit of causing the hist Seminole 
war in 1857, by wantonly and purposely shooting an Indian 
squaw, that the remnant of the tribe left in the swamps around 
Lake Okechobee, after the removal of the greater part in 1843, 
might be more circumscribed in their already narrow limits guar- 
anteed to them by a solemn treaty, and thus enable the constantly 
encroaching frontier settlements of outlaws from northern Florida 
and Georgia to enlarge their cattle ranches, — the main dependence 
of Cuba for beef . I met many "Crackers" who participated in 
that war of intended extermination of the tribe, and it was their 
universal testimony that the whites were, in every instance, the 
aggressors. One thing is certain : the word of the Indian and his 
general adherence to the golden rule were far more to be depended 
upon than the majority of the whites whom I met in that locality. 
Daylight Monday morning found me mounted upon a mule, 
starting again for Lake Okechobee in company with Mr. J. Guided 
across the country by my pocket compass and map. and disregard- 
ing turkeys, deer and game of all kinds, about sundown we turned 
our creatures loose, kindled a fire, cooked our supper, and lay 
down to sleep at the foot of a tall pine. The night was clear but 
moonless, and I slept soundly despite the mosquitoes, till the un- 
earthly hooting of a large owl right over my head awakened me. 
To raise my gun without raising myself and drop him at my feet, 
was the work of a moment, and to drop to sleep again was the 
work of another moment. In the morning I found the bird within 
three feet of me, and was severely reproved by my companion for 
not throwing it into the bushes when it fell, fearing it might have 
attracted the " varmint " to us. Within half a mile of our camp 
we struck the trail that led us in an hour to an Indian lodge — 
simply a roof-shelter of palmetto-leaves, supported by four posts, 
with the sides wholly exposed to the winds. A platform of rails 
but two feet high, covered with deer-skins, formed the couch. Out- 
side upou the ground was a lire with sweet potatoes and a corn- 



28 

cake baking in the ashes. Upon a log near the fire sat a squaw 
nursing a papoose, while a boy and girl of ten or twelve, entirely 
naked, were swinging a younger child in a hammock. As we 
came in sight, the paterfamilias, known among the " Crackers" 
as Tommy Tiger, planted himself in front of the lodge, with folded 
arms, standing full six feet two, clothed only in a frock reaching 
half-way to the knees. To Mr. J.'s " Good Morning, Tommy," 
not a word of reply or movement of a muscle." "■Yank, Oke- 
chobee, here night, you guide, silver," was uttered by Mr. J. 
partly by words, but more by signs. A shake of the head only in 
reply. " Where's Chief Tustenuggee? " A wave of the arm by 
Tommy signified he was way off hunting. 1 then broke in, " Me 
Yank, Okechobee, one day, silver," suiting my action to my word, 
by displaying a handful of the shining halves and quarters. His 
e} T es sparkled, and turning upon his heels without a sign struck 
a bee-line for the woods. "He's gone for his pony," said the 
guide. Observing a child enter a swamp, we followed, and cross- 
ing a creek on narrow footlogs, came out upon a hummock of pine 
land, where we found half a dozen more lodges, and plenty of women 
and children, but no men. The women were grubbing the ground 
preparatory to planting corn. The children were amusing them- 
selves with their bows and arrows. 

These Indians to the number of about forty families are a rem- 
nant of the Seminoles left in the Everglades at the close of the war 
of 1857. They are not recognized by the Government and main- 
tain their original habits of living by hunting and fishing in a 
tribal relation ; electing and deposing at pleasure their chief, whose 
word is absolute. No missionary labor has been dispensed among 
them, nor do they seemingly need it more than the neighboring 
whites. Their singular custom of loading down the female chil- 
dren with glass beads — necklaces obtained originally from the 
Spaniards and passing down the generations as heir-looms, must 
have some ph} T siological significance, which, in* my ignorance of 
their language I could not discover. A single necklace is put on 
at birth and additions made from time to time, till I counted over 
a hundred around the neck of a maiden of eighteen or twenty, the 
whole weighing not less than twenty-five pounds. A very aged 
squaw tottered around beneath a similar burden, and from her 
erect form, I inferred the object of wearing them might be to 
develop and preserve physical symmetry. 



29 

On the border of the creek I found an outcrop of coral rock 
greatly worn and decayed, with north and south strike. This find 
strongly countenances the correctness of Mr. C. J. Maynard's 
conclusions respecting the geological "process of land-making" 
by which the peninsula of Florida lias been formed. Simply pre- 
mising that the theory requires there to have been in geologic ages 
past, a more or less extensive ridge of rocks along what is now 
the western coast, as a foundation for coral-building, I will quote 
at length from the "Sportsman," in which paper Mr. Maynard 
first published his views in 1874. 

"Ages ago these breakers which roll upon this eastern sandy 
beach, dashed on the rocks of Western Florida, more than a hun- 
dred miles away. Then it was that the little polyp, living far 
down beneath the sea, began to abstract lime from the surround- 
ing waters and build a line of coral reef, just like the one which 
now lies along the Florida Keys. When the coral rock had risen 
to the surface of the water the action of the waves continually 
cast sand and shells over it, gradually filling the space between it 
and the shore. These accumulations arose more rapidly immedi- 
ately behind the reef and soon overtopped it, rising above the 
surface in a long ridge. This grew wider and wider, and finally 
became covered with vegetation, presenting the appearance of a 
veritable beach ridge like the one on which we stood. 

" The waves with their ceaseless motion ground and beat mil- 
lions of shells to pieces, just as they are now beating and grinding 
them. The wind swept the lighter fragments into the lagoon 
which was now formed beyond, while the waves during storms 
rushed over the ridge and carried with them the larger shells. 
The sand being heavier, settled down, and the shells gradually 
accumulated over it until the lagoon was filled and dry land was 
formed, which was soon covered with vegetable mold upon which 
grew the luxuriant vegetation of the South. 

"Thus it was that a great level plaiu was formed, with enor- 
mous depressions, in which fresh water collected. These hollows 
then formed swamps, which overflowed, and the water striviug to 
escape to the sea marked out the river beds. It can now be un- 
derstood how it is that the foundation of Florida is composed of 
lime rock. This immense bed of loose fragments of shell became 
cemented together by pressure with the help of water, and now 
forms the underlying strata just below the surface of the soil. 



80 

" This in general is the plan of the formation of Florida. Two 
of these parti}' filled lagoons are now to be seen on , the eastern 
coast: Indian River — which, as it has a supply of fresh water 
continually sweeping through it from the swamps at the north, 
will probably always remain much as it is at present; Mosquito 
lagoon — which, as the shelly beach on the western side indicates, 
is now slowly filling and before many seasons have passed will be 
solid land. The water of this lagoon is very salt. The tide ebbs 
and flows but a short distauce from the inlet, which is shallow and 
narrow, while on account of constant evaporation, the waters of 
the southern end of the lagoon sometimes contain twenty-five per 
cent, more salt than that of the neighboring ocean. Where the 
beach ridge is narrow the coral reef can be seen just below the 
surface of the water. The beach ridge is twenty-five feet higher 
than the surface of the ocean ; yet, during storms, the waves dash 
over the top." 

According to this theory the St. John's flows in the latest formed 
lagoon west of the Indian River, while the southern terminus of 
the peninsula must once have been north of Lake Okechobee, and 
have been continued southerly by successive reefs curving to the 
southwest. 

In about half an hour Indian Tommy returned bestride a pony 
without saddle or bridle. Girting on a blanket, with stirrups of 
deerskin and a bridle corresponding, and binding on his mocca- 
sins, with a few sweet potatoes tucked into the bosom of his frock, 
he mounted and started for the woods in a bridle-path without a 
sign of any kind indicating his intentions. We mounted aud fol- 
lowed in true Indian file at a stiff trot for au hour, without a back- 
ward look from our guide. Coming to a creek bordered on either 
side for fifty feet with thick underbrush, he dismounted and 
sounded the quagmire with a large stick, till, finding a fording- 
place, he led his pou} T b} 7 the thong reins, across the slough. We 
followed his example, but when we emerged from the thicket, he 
was trotting at double speed, full quarter of a mile distant. At 
the end of another hour, he suddenly dismounted, hung all his 
horse equipments upon a branch, turned the pony loose, and sat 
down composedly to eating his potatoes. Imitating him we built 
a fire, boiled our coffee, broiled our venison, and at one o'clock 
signified that we were at his service. Immediately he struck into 



31 

a blind trail in the nnburnt grass, that terminated in quarter of an 
hour in a cane-brake. Signifying to one of us to follow a few 
feet to the right of him, and to the other a few feet to the left, he 
plunged into the morass parting the cane with his hands. In half 
an hour the water was nearing my waist, when we came upon four 
canoes hollowed from logs. Tommy selected the best, and mo- 
tioning to us to get in, with some difficulty we succeeded, lying 
close in the bottom. He then went still further into the cane, till 
lost to view, but soon returned with a long pole and a paddle. 
Bounding into the canoe like a cat, he poled us along for an hour, 
when we entered a cypress-swamp, with open water among the 
huge trunks, though greatly impeded by cypress-knees from be- 
neath, and bramble growth from above. For once, his Indian 
keenness was at fault, and after fruitless efforts for an hour, to 
penetrate the cypress slough, we worked our way back to where 
we entered, when Tommy started off waist deep in the water, 
prospecting. When a hundred feet away a low chuckle reached 
our ears. ''He has found it," exclaimed my companion, and 
speedily he appeared with an approximation to a smile upon his 
countenance, the first I had noticed. Poling the canoe through 
the cane and saw-grass to the spot, I noticed a twig broken half 
off, two feet above the water and bent to the left; also tiags, a 
sure indication of a sluggish current or channel. Fifty feet fur- 
ther on a twig was broken similarly, but bent to the right. Though 
in a creek, no current was perceptible, and often a thick curtain 
of brambles had to be lifted by Tommy's pole while we dragged 
ourselves beneath. In other places logs impeded our track, which 
we sometimes crawled under, and at other times hauled the canoe 
over, Tommy, giant that he was, depressing the bow, or elevating 
the stern. After toiling another hour in forcing our way through 
the cypress and disturbing not a few " 'gators, moc'sius and such 
like varmin," as my cracker companion called them, we found our- 
selves suddenly debouching on the lake, with only a water-horizon 
in front, ami limitless hanks on the right and left. The problem 
is solved — there is a Lake Okechobee, ami even my cracker guide, 
who had been live years searching for it, is obliged to give up his 
doubts and confess that I had enabled him to find it. Before 
landing we paddled out from the shore for a quarter of a mile. 
Sounding with a pole, we found it eight feet deep, and were as- 



sured by Tommy it was nowhere deeper than that. Its shallow- 
ness permits light winds to stir up the bottom ; and hence its des- 
titution of fish, the line sand being troublesome to their gills. My 
first impulse, as I stepped from the canoe, was to climb the tallest 
tree and see if I could discover the boat or camp of the " explorer" 
and his party. Seeing nothing of them, I contented myself with 
cutting my name in the bark of a huge box tree, in hopes, if they 
had not already passed this point in their circumnavigation of the 
lake, they might find it. and thus Erwin know ere we met, how well 
I had fulfilled my promise to see the lake before leaving Florida. 
Two weeks later they passed the point, but not near enough to 
discover signs of occupation. It is now known as the result of 
their exploration, that "the lake is about forty-five miles in length, 
from north to south, and thirty in width from east to west near 
the center." With the exception of two small islands on the 
southwest border, it is an unbroken expanse of water, terminating 
at the south in "the Everglades, through which without creek or 
river, the accumulated drainage of thousands of square miles of 
territory slowly percolates by millions of channels with countless 
ramifications, to the ocean and the gulf." Convinced that the 
shores of the lake, where I examined it, were utterly barren of 
animated natural history, and warned by the low descending sun, 
I gave orders for our return. 

Having gratified my curiosity as to the existence of the lake, I 
more carefully inspected the skirting cypress slough on my return, 
and was amazed at the gigantic ferns and flaming epiphytic air- 
plants. Overarching vines and Spanish moss festooned the trees, 
while variegated leaves of beautiful lilies tinted the waters. But 
hideous snakes and repulsive alligators alone represented the ani- 
mal kingdom to enjoy these rare charms of the vegetable — leading 
me often to ask, " Why does the Creator so frequently display his 
selectest skill in places inaccessible to mortal man?" 

Reached the hiding place of the canoes at sundown and the 
halting place at dusk to find our horses all right. It being too 
late to go further, we built our camp tire, and sharing our supply 
with Tommy, 1 lay down to sleep, with a known murderer and 
outlaw on one side and a wild Indian on the other, iu a wilderness 
at least fifty miles distant from any semblance of civilization. It 
was impossible to prevent intrusive thoughts of suspicion that my 



33 

watch and silver might prove a stronger temptation than their 
honesty could bear — especially when I awoke about midnight and 
found Tommy stepping noiselessly near my head. Instinctively 
one hand grasped my pistol and the other searched for my hatchet, 
till I discovered his intentions were only to recruit the fire. To 
thwart the clouds of mosquitoes that settled down upon every ex- 
posed part of my body, and even pierced readily through my sail- 
cloth pants and blue flannel shirt, as soon as Tommy lay down I 
parted the fire and laid myself down between the two heaps, that 
the wind might blow the pine-knot smoke across my face. As a re- 
sult from the gathering of the soot upon my hair and beard, I was, 
in the morning, far more of an Indian, in appearance than Tom- 
my, to his great amusement — the second time I had seen anything 
like a relaxing of his facial muscles. 

Observing numerous stumps of large trees, that had evidently 
been cut by a civilized axe, I learned from Tommy that we were 
encamped upon the site of General Taylor's great battle with the 
Indians in 1837, when he was most disastrously defeated. Tommy 
explained in his pantomimic way how the soldiers fled in their 
retreat, and also how the Indians scattered, in the final issue of 
the war, to the swamps we had just penetrated. 

But where are our horses? Tommy climbed the tallest tree, 
but could see nothing of them. Descending, he took a circuit, 
till, discovering their tracks, he darted off in a tangent, returning 
in a couple of hours, driving them before him. Having Tommy 
to feed, we were on short allowance for breakfast, but on reaching 
Tommy's lodge at noon, he brought out sweet potatoes and coru- 
bread in abundance, with jerked venison, and, as a luxury, he 
drew into a broken gourd some honey from a bottle made of the 
skin of the leg of a deer, stripped off whole and plugged up at 
the ankle end with a wooden stopper. We all clipped our bread 
together into the gourd, with a good relish — so readily does real 
hunger do away with squeamishness. After lunching, I offered 
the promised silver. Tommy held his open palm towards me, but 
turned his face from me. I dropped into his palm one, two, three, 
four half-dollars, when he closed it, tucked the silver away in his 
frock, and started off, without any more of a farewell than of a 
welcome the day before. 

For fifty years an Indian relic constructed of a dozen box- 



34 

tortoise shells, bound together by deer-skin thongs, each one 
partially filled with wild beans, had lain in a physician's office in 
Providence, R. I., with the tradition that it came from the Semi- 
noles, though nothing more could be said about it when it was 
presented to the museum of Brown University. At my first sight 
of the Indian lodges, I was gratified to observe the same article 
suspended under the roof of each one. As Tommy turned to leave 
me, I signified my desire to purchase a pair of them. At first he 
flatly refused, but as I urged, he commenced a dialogue with his 
squaw and aged mother, which ended in his holding up one finger 
for one, and two for two, meaning a dollar for one, and two dollars 
for a pair. I readily took a pair, and then desired him to put 
them on, and show me how to use them. At that he straightened 
up to his full height of six feet two, folded his arms and looked 
down upon me with such a withering frown as completely cowed 
me. Mr. J. instantly grasped his pistol, so threatening was his 
scowl. But Tommy quickly recollected himself, pocketed the 
insult aud contemptuously pointing to his wife with the exclama- 
tion, " Squaw dance," turned upon his heel and left me. I at 
once saw my mistake, and how grievously I had insulted him by 
intimating that he, a brave, should demean himself to put on an 
article which, I afterwards learned, was worn only by the squaws 
as a musical accompaniment to their green-corn dances. Going 
over to her, I held out a silver quarter, when she readily bound 
them below the knee, and gave me a specimen of a Seminole reel. 
My return to Fred's camp was devoid of interest, except that 
my Cracker companion got out of tobacco from sharing with 
Tommy (who, in his turn, shared with all his picaninnies except 
the papoose in the hammock) , and soon became very cross, often 
putting his horse into a gallop and getting far ahead of me, it 
being almost impossible for me with stick and spur to urge my 
mule out of a slow trot. The second day he became more inso- 
lent, and insisted finally upon breaking camp at 10 o'clock at 
night, to reach home at midnight, saying his horse would know 
the way home in the darkest night. Knowing what he might be 
if the lion within him was aroused, I carefully avoided irritating 
him, and let him have his own way. When about two miles from 
home, he wanted me to let him have my pistol to fire off, as a 
signal to his family that he was coming — pretending that he al- 



35 

ways did so when he returned home. Asking him why he did not 
use his own, he said, " mine spoke loudest." As I handed it to 
him with my left hand, I cocked my double barreled gun with my 
right, and fell back a little into the darkuess. He fired two shots 
in quick succession, and said he would fire two more half a mile 
further on, and did so, and then returned me the pistol and some- 
what relieved my anxiety. Just upon that, a year-old colt belong- 
ing to him galloped up, and, though doing nothing out of the way, 
he commenced venting his spite upon it by filling the air with his 
curses. At length, determined to hurt something, he dismounted 
and commenced belaboring the colt with a large club, but in the 
darkness gave his own horse a thwack that sent him flying and 
landed his saddle-bags in the bushes. The faithful beast, how- 
ever, returned at his call, and after a long search the saddle-bags 
were replaced, and we arrived at his cabin to find Fred all right 
in his tent, but greatly rejoiced at my return. I have no reason 
to think Mr. J. designed harm, but to this day his conduct is 
utterly unaccountable to me. 

During my absence Fred tented alone, employing the first day 
in household matters, cleaning his gun, sharpening his hatchet 
and skinning-knives, shooting a couple of birds in the vicinity of 
the camp, trying his hand at baking bread in a borrowed Dutch 
oven, and retiring at sundown ; but the wandering hogs so dis- 
turbed him he rose soon after midnight and built a rousing fire. 
This brought from the cabin a Mr. N., the eccentric character of 
the settlement, a squatter and bachelor, whose homestead, three 
miles distant in the woods, consisted of a mule cart, beneath which 
he slept in his blanket on the bare ground, and whose personal 
property comprised the one suit of clothes he wore and the mule 
I rode to the lake, with dilapidated saddle, bridle and saddle-bags. 
Lending a hand to the squatters occasionally, he earned a preca- 
rious subsistence, spending what little money he could get hold of 
for whiskey. Obeying the caution I had impressed upon me by 
Judge P., at my introduction to " Cracker" life, I carefully avoided 
inquiring into the antecedents of any one, but Mr. N. must have 
seen better days at some period in his life, for he would entertain 
us with Methodist songs from memory (as he could not read or 
write) by the hour together, — the only recognition of Christianity 
I found in all this benighted region. Though at least three-score- 



36 

and-ten, he assured me he intended to marry ere long ; and, when 
I interposed the objection of his want of a suitable lodging place, 
he quickly replied, "Any woman who didn't love him enough to 
sleep with him under his cart, wasn't worthy of him." My more 
extended acquaintance with " Crackers" of the feminine gender 
convinced me he would not find much trouble in pairing himself, 
if he should seriously pop the question. 

' While I was absent a " Cracker" boy stimulated Fred's gastro- 
nomic propensities by the offer of some eggs, which luxury called 
to mind the sugar syrup in the bottom of Five Mile Creek. The 
temptation to try for it was too strong to resist ; so, putting all 
his provisions inside of Mr. J.'s fence for fear of the hogs, leav- 
ing both ends of the tent open for them to walk through, rolling 
up all the clothing with the carpet-bag knapsack containing our 
arsenic into a bundle and putting it on the table I had extemporized 
for skinning purposes, he took his gun and trudged to the creek, 
and was delighted to see the jug sitting bolt upright on the bottom, 
but too deep down to reach with arm or stick, Though the water 
was very cold, in a trice, stripping and diving for it, he was 
overjoye'd to find the water had not leaked in to dilute it. And 
so the luxury we hadn't, we had. Securing a couple of herons, 
and this time firml}' retaining hold of the coveted jug, he retraced 
his steps to the camp with beatific visions, which were destined 
to be dashed to the ground as he came in sight of it. The table 
lay flat and everything was scattered around, with the hogs making 
merry with all the women in the cabin three hundred feet distant 
had not saved, as they heard the table fall. Fortunately, both 
for ourselves and the hogs directly, and indirectly for our contin- 
uance on good terms with the " Crackers" in the settlement — for 
the hogs were common property — the women saved the arsenic 
before the creatures had penetrated to it. Having righted things 
and carefully potted two bones of a deer for soup the next morn- 
ing, securing the cover beyond the possibility of a hog's snout 
reaching the meat, he lay down to sleep. By 4 o'clock in the 
morning the hogs routed him out, but the pot containing the soup 
meat was seemingly untouched. All preparations being made, the 
pot was opened, when, lo, one of the two bones was missing ! 
Though every necessary caution had been taken against the inser- 
tion of a hog's snout, none had been taken against a coon's snout 



3? 

or a 'possum's paw. Spending his third day alone in skinning 
birds and contriving better arrangements for protection against 
the hogs and "varmint " he laid down to sleep at dark, only to 
be aroused by my return at midnight. Little sleep, however, had 
either of us, so annoying were the hogs, and we decided to quit 
that locality as speedily as possible. 

Having accomplished the desideratum of the trip, in seeing the 
lake and disabusing naturalists of its pretentions as an elysium 
for them, we were all at sea as to future plans, for the second 
object of our trip was still in abeyance, — the securing of specimens 
of rare birds and their eggs, and a study of them in their native 
haunts. Our wily "Cracker," ever on the alert to make money 
out of us, honestly or dishonestly, suggested our camping for a 
few days at a " heronry" a day's tramp into the heart of Alpati- 
okee Swamp, known only to himself and the Indians, but impen- 
etrable, except by a boat, on account of the deep water and the 
cypress-knees. He also informed us that, three miles down the 
creek near which we were encamped, there was a flat-bottomed 
boat just adapted to our need, which the owner would sell at a 
reasonable price. So Tom was despatched with the oxen to bring 
it. Towards night he returned, saying it had lain upon the bank 
so long, drying in the sun, that he could thrust his hand between 
every plank. Suggesting to him that we would take it to pieces 
and re-nail and re-caulk it, I went back with him, and bringing it 
to the camp, we set about the operation. As there were neither 
sawn boards nor nails in all the settlement, we worked very care- 
fully to save what we had. For caulking we used the lace fibre 
of the palmetto leaf besmeared with tar, which we tried out of 
the pine knots by smothering them in an oven made in the ground. 
When finished, we had a scow twelve feet in length, four feet 
wide, turned up two feet at each end, with a gunwale of eight 
inches, — the frail bark that subsequent experience proved was to 
save us many times from the jaws of alligators and a watery 
grave. Having bargained with Mr. J. to take us with his ox-team 
to the heronry, and return for us in ten days, at so much a day, 
we had our luggage all ready for him to load into the scow soon 
after daylight, and requested him to drive about a hundred yards 
to our camp for it. As the heronry was beyond his house from 
the camp, he refused to come or even to lend us the least assist- 



38 

ance in getting our heavy packs to the team, saying "he bargained 
to start from his house." As before suggested, we knew it was 
well not to arouse the tiger in him, and so we toted them ourselves 
to the scow, he grumbling all the time that we were delaying him. 
About 9 o'clock we got off, but were ourselves delayed by our 
teamster's insisting upon a long tarry at each Cracker's hut we 
passed within the first five miles. By careful balancing of our 
load, we managed to ford almost to swimming Ten Mile Creek, 
and keep our powder dry, and soon after entered the Flats, show- 
ing only a water-horizon with an occasional island a few feet in 
diameter, on which from one to half a dozen tall pines were grow- 
ing, with a thick growth of underbrush, — excellent rendezvous 
for panthers, wild-cats, 'possums and land snakes, wild turkey 
roosting in the trees. To wade knee-deep was the work of the 
day, carefully avoiding the dreaded moccasin, which, lurking in 
the tussocks of grass, " strike their envenomed fangs deep into 
the leg ere the traveller is aware of their presence." Plodding 
on wearily after the cart, as the safer position through the fright 
to the snakes occasioned by the paddling of the oxen, we came 
to a grassy plain a mile in width, from which the clrying-up waters 
had receded, but revealing midway across it a creek near waist- 
deep with perpendicular sides. But my spade soon changed their 
steepness to a slope, and the faithful oxen, accustomed to rushing 
through a stream, landed all safe on the other side. Two or three 
such, but with sloping banks, we met in the course of the day, 
and one altogether too deep to wade conveniently ; but to my 
request that we ride over, our teamster on the cart only replied 
by pouring out a volley of oaths, and urging the cattle across 
before we could come up with him. Thus alternating between 
strips of marsh and wide wastes of water, we at length discerned 
on the horizon a cypress-clump towering up like a " blue moun- 
tain." " That is the heronry," exclaimed our guide, " but there 
is no camping place nearer than this-island clump of palmettos 
near by." " But how far is the heronry from here?" " Perhaps 
four miles." " And do you expect us to wade this long distance 
twice a day for ten days and carry our game?" "Certainly." 
" Then take us right back to your house." After much persuasion 
he was induced to go on and run the risk of finding a nearer 
camping island. At length we found one less than fifty feet across 



39 

with considerable dead wood upon it, which our teamster said was 
not over a mile distaut from the heronry, and was absolutely the 
nearest spot of dry land to it. Careful observation afterwards 
proved it to be not less than two miles. Cutting a path through the 
dense palmetto scrub bordering the island, we unloaded our traps 
from the scow, and left Fred to put things to rights for a ten days' 
camp-keeping, with the caution to be careful about setting the 
dry leaves afire, while the teamster and myself hastened on to 
launch the scow near the heronry. This effected, we noticed a 
fine camping island not more than a quarter of a mile distant ; 
but it was too late, as all our luggage was two miles back. Near- 
ing the camp on our return, Fred was seen repeatedly hurrying 
out into the water and back again, as though in trouble. It 
seems, notwithstanding our precaution, the fire had got the upper 
hand of him and was spreading, and he was lugging the powder 
and provisions out of the way of danger to an extemporized 
platform of sticks he had constructed in the water. Further ex- 
amination proved the soil to be peaty, and suggested the danger 
of subterranean combustion, and such a possible thinning of the 
crust as to refuse to bear our weight some night, with the result 
of tumbling us, powder and all, into a mass of smouldering em- 
bers. To avoid this, we encircled our hearth with a trench and 
daily supplied it plentifully with water. To obtain filtered water 
for culinary purposes, we dug a shallow well a few feet within the 
margin of the island on the opposite side from our entrance, which 
soon filled with water percolating through the peaty soil. This, 
strained from the insects and small lizards continually tumbling 
into the well, served our purpose satisfactorily. Having thor- 
oughly beaten the ground within and around our tent, to frighten 
away any ground rattlesnakes, scorpions and such like vermin as 
may have been lurking beneath the leaves, we commended our- 
selves to the care of Him who never slumbers nor sleeps, and lay 
down to rest at dusk. Excessive fatigue quickly invited sleep, 
but, the nights being moonless, for how long time we were uncon- 
scious I cannot say, when we were awakened by such deep bel- 
lowings within a few feet as made me think at first some bulls of 
the cattle herds ranging all over the country had come in to camp 
near us. It was our first experience of the full-toned bellowing 
of alligators so near us, and it was a question whether our savory 



40 

viands of our evening repast might not be attracting them to our 
limited quarters. The thought was not pleasant, nor made less 
so by the sudden chiming in of the most horrible throttling sounds 
that ever grated upon human ear. I have not been unaccustomed 
from my youth to the death-rattle of the dying bedside, or the 
gasping groans of the earlier slaughter-houses ; but in this medley 
of sounds that filled our ears, there was a perfect nondescript 
anomaly to me. Later experience leads me to suppose it was the 
dragging under of a large bird, perhaps the Water Ibis, by an 
alligator, as there was much splashing of water commingled with 
the shrieks and gurglings. But tired nature would assert herself, 
though only to be disturbed again by the distinct, but stealthy, 
tread of some animal close to our canvas. Is it a panther, is it 
a wild-cat, is it a coon, is it a possum, we whispered to each 
other. At length it approached my head and tapped the canvas 
within six inches of my face with its paw. I tapped back, when 
it bounded away, but with so light a bound that I was convinced 
it was not larger than a wild-cat or a coon, and felt no further 
alarm. Waking at daylight, we found abundant tracks of a wild- 
cat in the soft mud on the margin of our island and a flock of 
turkey-buzzards roosting directly over our heads, both indications 
of marauders warning us to put our things in order for safety 
before starting for the heronry. 

Strapping on my tin knapsack containing our lunch, with gun 
in left hand and a palmetto stick seven feet long in right, with 
which to slap the water to frighten away the moccasins, and in 
our high-topped boots, we started, Fred carrying his gun, two tin 
pans and a tin cup, and a board for the purpose of making a seat 
across the top of our scow. We had hardly left the camp when 
the water poured into our knee-top boots, adding greatly to the 
weight we had to carry. Frequently my slapping the water would 
scare up a moccasin, which, " striking an attitude" for striking, 
would await our nearer approach with threatening fangs. Dis- 
abled by a blow of the stick, I was on the alert for another. 
Carefully taking our bearings that we might not get lost on our 
return, we came in sight of the gunwale of our scow just peeping 
above the water, it having sunk during the night. Cautiously 
approaching it, lest it might shelter underneath the dreaded reptile, 
I aided Fred into it to bail it out, while I proceeded to cut away 



41 

the marginal underbrush and make a path for pushing the scow 
into deep water. On starting, I had forgotten to take my stick, 
in my enthusiasm at the sight of the flocks of Spoonbills and 
Herons flyiug over the swamp ; but ere I had taken ten steps, 
pausing in the water half knee-deep to watch their movements, I 
looked down and saw just beneath the surface the largest moccasin, 
I had hitherto seen, crawling between my legs. Instantly becom- 
ing motionless and telling Fred to keep quiet, I watched it " drag 
its slow length along," till its tail was a foot to the rear of me, 
and then showed it to Fred, whose blanched countenance would 
hardly permit him to exclaim, "Are you bitten?" I think I could 
sketch the markings on that snake's back with accuracy to-day, 
ten years after the occurrence, for I am sure I seemed to have 
ample time to examine them before the end of that tail showed 
itself. 

Anticipating some trouble with the scow, for some of the boards 
I used in repairing it were not straight-edged, I had prepared my- 
self with palmetto lace, and with my hatchet and knife re-caulked 
it, so that, should we bail it every few minutes we deemed it 
might be safe, and so pushed it through my path into deep water. 

Now for the results of all our toil, expense and danger, and, 
thanks to a kind providence, they are speedily realized. Hardly 
afloat and a roseate spoonbill rose from its nest and perched be- 
side it. Fred shot her while I poled the scow in all haste, as, the 
moment it struck the water, watchful alligators made for it on 
every side. We triumphed and secured it, and then Fred climbed 
to the nest amid the filthy branches while I kept the scow imme- 
diately under him, lest, falling from a dead limb into the water, 
he should himself be gobbled up by the alligators, who were watch- 
ing the operation to the number of at least half a dozen. Three 
eggs were secured and identified. Bailing out our frail scow, I 
pushed it among the cypress knees, both excited to the highest 
pitch, as the birds kept rising from their nests, and, circling in 
the gleaming sunlight displayed their roseate hues to the best ad- 
vantage. Soon another falls a victim to Fred's unerring aim, but 
alas, drops right into an alligator's mouth, who goes to the bot- 
tom with it in a trice. "Fred, lay low and I'll have that bird 
yet." " Nonsense, it's down the alligator's maw by this time." 
"We '11 see," I replied, and pushing the scow over the spot of 



42 

engulfment, I could plainly see about six feet deep the pink hues 
of the spoonbill as it was held down by the alligator. Two or 
three thrusts of my pole so astonished the brute that he let go the 
bird, and it now graces the Museum of Brown University. Be- 
side the spoonbills, there were by the hundreds, the different spe- 
cies of Egrets, Herons and Ibises. Having identified the eggs of 
the different nests by carefully noting what birds flew from them, 
and secured about fifty in all, beside as many birds as we thought 
we could skin before dark, we left our scow in the marsh outside 
and returned to camp carrying our load of about fifty pounds 
each, wading every step of the two miles with our boots full of 
water. 

The next day being Sunday was spent in camp, cooking and 
wishing we might hear from home, as no letter had yet reached 
us. About two o'clock Mr. J. rode into camp, horseback, with 
letters for both of us, and saying he had a good chance to trade 
with the Indians if he had silver. So 1 accommodated him with 
$15 and engaged him to come for us in nine days. Wandering to 
the further side of our fifty foot island for meditation, the thought 
suddenly struck me, what should either of us do if the other should 
perchance be killed ? Until that moment such a possibility had 
not occurred to me, and I felt the cold shudder creeping over me, 
till I had worked out a plan that seemed feasible for preserving 
the remains in such an exigency. My plan was to sew up the 
body in our stout tent-cloth and my india-rubber blanket, and sus- 
pending it in a tree, the survivor find his way back to Mr. J.'s as 
best he might. In case of severe indisposition or maiming only, 
the problem was less easily solved, as the indisposed or injured 
could not be left alone. Considering all the risks I began to re- 
gret there was not a third member of the party, and I resolved 
then and there that I would run no such risk again. 

On our third return to the cypress-slue, while Fred was bailing 
out the scow, I was attracted towards the margin in an effort to 
get within gunshot of a spoonbill circling over head. Was it in- 
direct vision, or was it God's overruling providence that caused 
me as I raised my gun to fire, to look down instead of up, to see 
that 1 was within a gun's length of the snout of a ten-foot alliga- 
tor half concealed in the water, but whose jaws were slowly open- 
ing to close about my limbs with a snap defying any mechanical 



43 

motion for quickness. To pour the contents of three chambers of 
buck-shot into his side just back of the fore-leg was the work of 
a moment. As he rolled over on his side we left him for dead, 
but returning to the spot three hours later he was gone. 

We often found on the same tree eight or ten different kinds of 
nests, and observed that no nest was ever left vacant when undis- 
turbed — one mate instantly takiug the place of the other — as a regu- 
lar system of robbery was constantly carried on between the rapa- 
cious hawks and crows, and the inoffensive herons. The slue was 
not very extensive, and after robbiug the lower nests from ten to 
twenty feet in height and shooting the owners, we turned our at- 
tention to those nests from thirty to forty feet in height. On the 
fourth day Fred's shoulder became so lame from climbing he 
could hardly raise his arm and was forced to exchange work with 
me. Unfortunately we had no climbing irons, but fastening my 
claw-hatchet securely to my wrist and carefully testing the 
strength of every limb with a pull upon it before trusting my 
weight to it, I succeeded in mounting higher than I had ever done 
on trees, since the venturesome period of childhood. It was not 
a pleasant sight in my elevated position to see a dozen heads of 
alligators with pop-out eyes watching all my movements, and I 
knew that a treacherous branch might furnish them with a feast. 
Merely throwing down a stick would start them out of their lurk- 
ing places, and bring into display their activity in the water, as 
well as their flexibility iu winding in and out among the half con- 
cealed cypress-knees. The climber let the eggs and young birds 
down by a string in a handkerchief to the one remaining in 
the scow. 

One of the Crackers in the settlement happening to be at Fort 
Capron when the semi-weekly mail arrived by sailboat from Jack- 
sonville, he undertook to bring our second batch of letters to us 
with a package of my photos for which 1 gave a sitting the morn- 
ing before I sailed from the north. But after searching for us 
two days he gave it up, and delivered the letters to Mr. .1. to bring 
to us when he should send for us. Another Cracker learning that 
we had taken a scow to the heronry laid in with Mr. J. to direct 
him to it that he might avail himself of our means of navigating 
the slue to secure Egret plumes, which were in great demand for 
ladies' bonnets. When half way back to our camp on the fifth 



44 

day, we found him wading towards us. Joyfully welcoming him 
he returned to our camp, but as our tent was hardly large enough 
for Fred and myself, he slept outside rolled up in his blankets. 

"We frequently saw deer feeding in the open water-prairie, but 
as there was no cover for still hunting were unable to secure any. 

Our constant firing had either killed off or frightened away the 
more timid spoonbills, so that Fred and the Cracker decided to 
take night and morning rations and spend the sixth night in the 
heronry to secure Egrets as they should come in at night from 
their feeding grounds or go forth in the morning — thus leaving me 
alone at the camp for that night. It was a new experience for 
me, although I had become accustomed to our nightly serenade 
medley of alligator bellowing, wild cat yawling, frog peeping, 
turkey gobbling, heron screaming, owl hooting and every other 
kind of unearthly sound pertaining to a wilderness swamp. The 
death rattlings of alligator or wild cat victims were frequently 
repeated on every side of me, and about midnight I was aroused 
by a second visit from our prowler of the first night. Again he 
tapped the canvass over my head as though clawing it, and bound- 
ed away with a heavy tread as I tapped back. Determined to 
identify the creature and, if possible, secure it for the Museum, I 
hastily lit my dark lantern, and lifting the side of my tent saw a 
little way off in the darkness two eyes gleaming upon me. Fear- 
ing to shoot my gun lest I should alarm my companions two miles 
distant, I fired my pistol at the eyes, with only the effect of elicit- 
ing a yell and a bound into the thicket. I was soon asleep again, 
not waking till long after sunrise. Fred and the Cracker returned 
towards night well laden with birds and plumes. Our provisions 
growing short we sent the Cracker into the settlement on the 
morning of the ninth day to hasten Mr. J.'s coming for us, as we 
had only flour enough left for one meal, nine eggs and a little 
coffee. Our spoonbill carcasses being all gone, we were forced to 
eke out our larder with white ibises. About noon the next day 
Tom arrived with the team, and after loading on to the axles the 
scow, we filled it with our luggage and started for civilization, 
such as it was. While on the island Fred was stung twice by 
scorpions, but our bottle of hartshorn brought quick relief. About 
dark some of Tom's family met him and they held a long con- 
sultation apart from us. As yet Tom had no reason to suppose I 



45 

knew anything about his being one of the murderers of Mr. Lang, 
but I saw from their countenances there was trouble brewing for 
them. When he returned to the team, I put on as cheerful a 
countenance as possible and commenced joking him, but he had 
no heart for my jesting, and I left him to his forebodings which 
were not unfounded, as the sequel will show. 

Once more encamped on the old spot, we hoped, as we bunked 
for the night, the thievish hogs had forgotten us during our ten 
days' absence, but were wofully mistaken, as our frequent alterna- 
tions of " shoo, shoo," and snatches only of dozing without real 
sleep proved. While breakfasting we were planning how to pro- 
vide the grub necessary for carrying out a plan proposed by our 
Cracker visitor at the rookery for the next ten days, to the effect 
that we should proceed to a locality on the coast called Fort Pierce, 
four miles south of Fort Capron, where he had a boat, and camp- 
ing there let him supply us with shore birds and fish in such num- 
bers that we would be kept skinning and preserving all the time 
till we were ready to say " halt." This plan would cut us loose 
from Mr. J., who, subsequent experience showed, was not quite 
ready to let the goose that was laying the golden egg for him, 
fly away. So he and our new parasite, whom we will hereafter 
call Jim, came to our camp with many protestations of interest in 
our success, and proposed a postponement of the ten days' shore 
hunting and fishing for a ten days' trip, more or less, to another 
rookery two days distant, much larger than the one we had just 
left, and bordered by a pine hummock affording good camping 
ground immediately upon its shore. As it was yet early in the 
season for gathering some kinds of eggs, we snapped at the bait 
and sending off Tom ten miles to Fort Capron for replenishing 
our larder, spent the day in recaulking our scow, and packing the 
material we had left to dry in the loft of Mr. J.'s log stable. Ver- 
min of some kind, despite the arsenic, had ruined my rattlesnake's 
skin, leaving me only the head and rattles. The mammal and bird 
skins were on the eve of moulding from the excessive dampness 
of the nights, and it was becoming a serious question whether we 
had not better get out of so swampy a region, to save what we 
had already secured at so great an expense of fatigue and money. 
To leave a cherished plan unaccomplished had not been the expe- 
rience of my life of nearly three-score years, and I also felt some 



46 

responsibility in reference to introducing my young companion of 
less than a score to such an unfortunate future. After another 
sleepless night through the unwelcome visitations of our porcine 
tormentors, we repacked the scow placed upon the ox-team axles, 
and bade a final adieu to the settlement on ten-mile creek, with no 
regret, though in Mrs. J. we had found a true-hearted woman, 
who, alone of all we had met in the settlement, had manifested 
toward us the least spark of unselfishness. 

In the outgoing of this trip, Mr. J.'s little son of ten years 
accompanied us, and enlivened the monotony of the tramp by his 
cheerful and unsophisticated nature, often plying me with questions 
concerning Yankeeland that made me grieve to think so bright a 
lad was being raised under such outlaw influences. An incidental 
remark, as we were fording a deep stream, whose quicksand bottom 
threatened to sink oxen and load out of sight, that in my country 
I had often driven oxen with a load of wood across a pond without 
sinking an inch, so taxed his credulity that he called upon my 
companion for confirmation of the statement. He had never seen 
a flake of snow or a film of ice, and no kind of illustration at our 
command could make him comprehend the fact. Dressed only 
in shirt and trousers, he scrambled around in the briars and $aw- 
grass with naked feet as fearless of harm as though rattlesnakes 
and moccasins were as unknown in that region as snow and ice. 

Camping soon after dark, we were too tired to unload our tent, 
and each chose his own place and lay down upon a bed of palmetto 
leaves and went to sleep counting the stars. Our little " cheer- 
fulness" went searching in the dark for water, and just on the 
brink of a pool felt a ground rattlesnake wriggling about his naked 
ankles. Nimbly jumping aside, he captured the reptile and 
brought it to me as a trophy. At early dawn, we were off, and 
soon after sunrise crossed fresh tracks of deer, and not much 
further a panther's tracks. The panther should be hunted only 
with dogs, that his attention may be verted from the hunter 
while he is drawing sufficiently near to make sure of a deadly aim. 
In the course of the day we arrived at the rookery, and for once 
realized all the expectations raised by our Cracker guides. It 
was a cypress-slue of ten or twelve acres, with the exception of 
the end nearest us of about two acres of clear water, the whole 
encircled with a margin of dense undergrowth twenty-five or thirty 



47 

feet in thickness. So matted was the marginal growth it was 
impervious to the gaze beyond eight or ten feet, but ou climbing 
a tall tree and looking over the underbrush, the clear water fur- 
nished to the sight a unique aquarium that no other State than 
Florida, I imagine, can furnish. I counted one hundred alligators, 
from three to twelve feet in length, leisurely swimming in all 
directions in the two-acre space, and ceased counting. Some were 
dragging long rushes in their mouths across the water, evidently 
to construct their nests, which are built on the margin above the 
water. The alligator lays from fifty to seventy eggs in alternate 
layers of reeds and eggs, and then leaves the mass of rubbish to 
putrefy and heat the eggs for incubation. Instinct brings the 
mother to the spot at the right time to tear open the pile and 
release the chicks on their first peeping. 

Selecting a place for our camp just far enough from the swampy 
undergrowth to feel safe from the visits of alligators, in two hours 
we had a path cut through the undergrowth with a corduroy bottom 
laid, along which to push our scow for launching in the clear water. 
Mr. J. and his son returning with the team, this time we had with 
us Jim, an experienced hunter and boatman. Our experience in 
the first rookery led us to provide a boat-hook for this, beside 
poles and paddles. Our boat launched, we essayed to cross the 
clear water to the cypress-slue, above which we could see hundreds 
of Spooubils, White Ibises and Egrets sailing, while others were 
diving in and out among the branches. So far as Crackers or 
Indians knew, we were likewise the first ever to launch a boat of 
any kind upon these waters, as well as at the first rookery. To 
the alligators, our invasion of their hitherto undisturbed domain 
must have been something akin to the astonishment of the natives 
when the vessels of Columbus hove in sight. Fearless, they swam 
up to the gunwale as to a floating log, and but for the thumping 
of their snouts with our poles, they would evidently have boarded 
us and taken possession of our frail batteaux. A few charges 
of shot so educated them, however, that on the second or third 
day they were ready to give us a wide berth as we issued among 
them. As we boated among the cypress-knees, they were still 
more numerous and audacious, so that we found it almost impos- 
sible to secure a single bird we had shot, a half-dozen at a time 
springing from their lurking-places the moment the bird touched 



48 

the water. Another set of nest- robbers than ourselves we found 
in the slue. The fish-crows by the hundreds were perched near 
the nests of the curlews and herons, just out of the reach of their 
long necks ; but the moment a bird left the nest, either to exchange 
places with its mate or because frightened by the crack of our 
guns, these crows, so intent upon their plunder as to be themselves 
unterrified, would dart upon a nest, and, if the egg was small 
enough, fly away with it in its bill, or if large, pierce it with its 
bill and fly off with the contents dripping away through the air. 
Forced thus to change our tactics, either to secure birds or eggs, 
we made it a rule each morning to first shoot a number of crows 
as they flew out and in, and by occasionally getting ahead of the 
alligators secure a portion of them. Placing these upon the 
slanting bow of the scow, if our shot dropped a Spooubill or other 
bird, we would throw a dead crow in front of the nearest alligator 
making for our game, and thus manage, by giving away sometimes 
two or three crows, to secure one Spoonbill. 

In crossing the open water on our camp-ward trips, as we came 
out of the slue, our guide Jim was very expert in often hitching 
the boat-hook over the shoulder of a huge alligator headed the 
right way, and making him in his fright drag us across the pond, 
till, nearing the shore, he would let go by thrusting the hook 
forward and then, giving our steed a punch in the side, dismiss 
him. In a few days we had secured all the Spoonbills, Egrets, 
Ibises and Snake-birds and their eggs we could well care for, and 
began to think of leaving the interesting place. Our provisions, 
too. were giving out, so I told Jim he must take our breech-loading 
rifle and go out and get us some venison hams. In about fifteen 
minutes after leaving us, we heard three shots in quick succession, 
and in a few moments more he came in with the request that we 
go out and help him bring in the hams. Repairing to the spot, 
we found a buck and a doe lying as they fell, about ten feet apart, 
the third, a doe, running off with a broken shoulder, but found 
the next day a few hundred feet away, dead. Securing our hams, 
and a portion of the liver of each, we had jerked venison for 
days to come. In one of the livers I found the parasite fluke, 
always to be searched for in the hepatic system of herbivorous 
animals. 

Towards night of the sixth day Tom appeared with the oxen 



4.9 

and axles. Quickly converting our scow into a wagon-body, we 
prepared to bid farewell to cypress-slues and 'gator swamps, well 
pleased with our experience in seeing wild beasts and birds in 
their wild haunts. A day's tramping across pine hummocks and 
wallowing through intervening sloughs, brought us out upon an 
old army trail leading from Fort Capron on the Atlantic coast to 
Fort Bassinger on the Kissimmee. Following this with the forests 
on fire on both sides and trees falling across it, which had to be 
cut away, we camped at midnight for four hours by simply halting 
and lying down on the ground and sleeping as best we might. 
Resuming our march by earliest dawn, we soon found our way 
impeded by thick undergrowth and crosswise logs, which had to 
be cut away for the team. The last six miles being across a sandy 
hummock, with the thermometer at 100°, for six hours man and 
beast suffered exceedingly from thirst, and I began to long for 
the knee-deep morass, as more desirable. Towards night we 
reached Ft. Capron, and as I drew near was espied by Judge P., 
who had so kindly warned me, as I was about to leave for Oke- 
chobee, of the danger of trusting myself to the outlaws, who alone 
inhabited the region beside Indians. The instant he recognized 
me he rushed out of his house and clasped me around the neck, 
declaring he was never before so relieved in his mind, for he had 
about concluded his worst fears for our welfare had beeu realized. 
At Judge P.'s I found Doct. P. and Erwin who had returned 
but the day before from their circumnavigation of the lake, having 
had a very sorry and to Erwiu at least a very unprofitable time, 
for he had suffered most of the time from chills and fever which 
had now assumed a bilious form, aud had so reduced his strength 
that he was unable to leave his bed. At first sight of him, I saw 
that, if I would take him home alive, I must change my role aud 
turn nurse. Therefore I chose a camping-place not far away on 
the left bank of a stream about one-eighth of a mile above its d6- 
bouche into Iudian River. Just across the stream a stalwart negro 
by the name of Trott had recently " squatted," having a reputed 
lawful wife and a concubine, whose incessant quarreling made 
day discordant and night hideous except when the lord of the 
harem interfered and for the time turned one or the other out of 
the one-room shanty, as his fancy dictated. He was a native of 
the West Indies and had served on a man-of-war in varied ca- 

7 



50 

pacity, till he had acquired more or less skill as a navigator. His 
strength was fully equal to that of two ordinary men, and if pro- 
voked would have been a dangerous man to deal with. As soon 
as possible I sent by boat for a hermit doctor across the Indian 
River, whose prescriptions dispelled the bilious tendency and gave 
me encouragement that in eight or ten days I might commence my 
homeward journey. Subsequent acquaintance with this physician 
revealed a singular history. Originally from Vermont, where he 
had long time practiced medicine, he acted as Surgeon during the 
war in a western regiment, but instead of returning to his home 
at the close of the war, drifted to this frontier land, and doubtless 
under an assumed name commenced a hermit's life on the sandy 
island nearly opposite Fort Capron, whiling away his time in fish- 
ing and coralling green turtles for the Savannah market. At this 
time he had coralled about fifty, weighing from forty to a hundred 
and twenty-five pounds. I bought of him the largest as a speci- 
men for Brown University Museum. Two mouths later, he em- 
barked on a sloop commanded by the negro, to take his turtles to 
Savannah, and was wrecked and drowned on the coast near Fer- 
nandina.* 

Our camping-place for the week proved beset with mosquitoes 
and fleas beyond anything we had experienced in the wilderness, 
utterly banishing sleep till after midnight, and sheer exhaustion 
compelled it. We could in a measure relieve ourselves from the 
mosquitoes by filling our little tent, as we lay down, with the dense 
smoke of fat pine knots. But, for the fleas there was no relief, 
often observing them to jump from our blankets in swarms as we 
hung them out to dry in the morning. A second trip would sug- 
gest a bountiful supply of oil of pennyroyal with which to perfume 
our garments, and which is said to be flea-expelling. At this stage 
of our trip we began to suffer from the stinging bites of the black 
gnats, an insect so small as hardly to be detected with the naked 
eye, but whose bite sends a thrill through the nervous system alto- 
gether disproportionate to its size. To this annoyance, unlike 

♦Schooner Rover, for Savannah, ran ashore off Doboy on the 9th inst., and went to pieces 
in fifteen minutes. Capt. Trott, wife and child (colored), Dr. Garfield, a passenger, and two 
colored men got into the boat which was swamped and all drowned except the captain, who 
returned to the wreck, where two other passengers and the balance of the crew remained. 
They floated on a raft to St. Catherine's Island, where they were taken off by steamer Car. 
rie and brought to Savannah, Saturday morning. They were four days without food. 



51 

that of the fleas if one is provided with essence of pennyroyal, 
there is no remedy. 

A heavy rain for three days and nights kept us under shelter 
most of the time, blowiug the great quantity of eggs we had 
brought from the " cypress-slues " — our boatman Jim meanwhile 
making a fish-net of stout twine to use for seining the carp and 
small fish that abounded in the stream near whose mouth we were 
encamped. When finished we set it a little way up the creek, ex- 
pecting in the morning to find a variety enclosed in its meshes. 
But instead, an alligator, or perhaps an otter, swam through it 
and tore it to shreds, thus in one moment ruining our boatman's 
work of two days. 

The chuck-wills-widow, the analogue of our northern whip-poor- 
will, enlivened the nights with its plaintive note. To obtain one, 
as they are utterly secluded during the day, Jim fastened my dark 
lantern to the top of his head and going towards the sound, soon 
detected the bird in the cimmerean darkness, by the shine of its 
eyes, and secured it, though badly mutilated by the shot, as he 
was unable to judge of his distance from it. As soon as the 
norther of three days had blowed out, Fred spent a day across the 
Indian River shooting terns, skimmers and oyster-catchers, which 
rose from the water in flocks of thousands, while I prepared my 
large turtle for preservation, poisoning the carcass and salting the 
meat for our larder. The following day, I hired the stalwart ne- 
gro to accompany Jim and myself in a large boat to the Indian 
River Inlet, hoping to secure a saw-fish. These fish come in from 
the ocean through the inlet to prey upon the schools of fish that 
abound in Indian River. Swimming close to the bottom, when 
they perceive a school above, they quickly elevate their toothed 
upper jaw and whirling it about in the school, mangle and kill 
many to be eaten at their leisure. Our boat being provided with 
a coil of rope about a hundred feet in length, attached to a har- 
poon, we paddled gently where the water was about five feet deep, 
till discerning our game on the bottom, about twelve feet in length, 
Jim drove the harpoon completely through its body. Instantly 
the fish started for the ocean through the inlet, drawing out the 
line over the gunwale so rapidly as to make it smoke. The line 
having been made fast to the bow-post, when the end was reached, 
boat and all followed for half a mile with a velocity so great that 



52 

I quickly drew my hatchet from my belt and stood ready to cut 
the rope, if the bow gave indicatious of going under as the fish 
went into deeper water. At length he was wearied with the ex- 
ertion, and slacked up, when we began to play the creature, till 
worrying him on to a shoal place, I had a fine exhibition of the 
way he gyrates his saw when mutilating his prey. At length 
seizing a favorable moment as his head was raised out of the 
water, I planted a rifle-ball just midway between the eyes, when a 
quiver ran through his frame and he was dead. None judged him 
to weigh less than 800 pounds. Towing him across the river to 
our camp, it was the work of an entire day to skin and pack the 
specimen for transportation. 

While at this camp one of the better class of citizens privately 
interviewed me to learn what / might have learned during my 
forty days of intimacy with the murderers of Mr. Lang, saying, 
he had in his pocket a warrant received by the last mail from the 
Governor of the State for the arrest of Mr. J. and Tom and a 
neighbor of theirs, who were understood to be the guilty parties ; 
and suggested that, if I would leave interrogatories with a Notary 
Public before going out of the State, it might further the ends 
of justice. Replying, that I had carefully avoided any allusion 
to the murder myself, yet Mr. J., in our long tramps alone, had 
seemed to find relief in freeing his mind to me of his own accord, 
and had revealed enough to satisfy me who were the guilty par- 
ties, yet I could not betray confidence unless subpoenaed from 
Massachusetts as a hearsay witness. I have learned from news- 
papers that soon after I left the region a determined sheriff went 
into the settlement with a posse, and shot Mr. J. dead in his 
tracks while resisting arrest, but brought Tom to trial, who was, 
for the want of positive evidence, convicted only of manslaughter, 
and died within a year in the State prison. 

In nine days Erwin was strong enough to be conveyed to a 
couch prepared for him in a small sail-boat, and we started north- 
ward. It was our intention to start by 1 o'clock at the latest, 
and were ourselves all ready, but Jim's laziness delayed us till 5. 
Had we not had a superabundance of experience already in the 
thriftlessness of the Crackers, we should have gone crazy at the 
needless delay. The greatest boasters of what they can do, but 
the poorest performers of what they promise, they are unique in 



53 

their characteristics, and to the enterprising Yankee a marvel of 
incongruities. When the Anthropologist has satisfactorily traced 
the Hottentot and the North American Indian to their origin, he 
may turn his attention to the origin of the Florida Cracker and he 
will find a much harder problem to solve. I have been a far 
more patient man since my trip to Florida than before, two 
months' experience in Crackerdom doing more for me in the culti- 
vation of that grace than a half century previously. 

With a favoring breeze we made twelve miles by 10 o'clock, and 
camped on the west shore of Indian River on the sand, making 
Erwin as soft a couch of leaves as possible beneath our mosquito- 
bars, while Fred and myself lay dowu by the fire. By 3 o'clock 
the mosquitoes and sand-fleas got the mastery of us and banished 
all sleep thereafter. For fresh water we dug a hole about ten feet 
from the shore, which soon filled with water percolating the sand, 
the cohesive attraction of the sand retaining the salt. Breakfast- 
ing upon broiled turtle steak, we reached a Brown Pelican rookery 
on an island of eight or ten acres in extent. Our large boat 
grounding about a mile distant, we all went overboard but Erwin 
"and pushed it for half a mile. Then anchoring and pushing our 
small row-boat a quarter of a mile further, we left it and waded 
as much more, to behold the greatest curiosity of the kind I had 
ever dreamed of. The island was mostly covered with Mangrove 
trees, a kind of Banyan, whose limbs turn down from the height 
of eighteen or twenty feet and take root, thus forming an unin- 
terrupted canopy over a large part of the island. An acre, more 
or less, was covered with a clump of taller trees, in whifh Blue 
Herons were nesting. Hoping these might prove to be Wurde- 
mann, I first gave my attention to them, but through the failure 
of Fred's gun to fire, as the bird rose from its nest, lost my chance, 
to my great disappointment. Having secured the eggs, we turned 
towards the pelicans. The Mangrove is a slowly decaying tree, 
and, though at some time this grove must have been thrifty — 
probably before the pelicans took possession of it — now eveiy tree 
was barren of leaves and life. As we drew near, every branch 
seemed covered with nests as closely as they could be packed, — 
indeed, so near oftentimes that a bird sitting on its own could 
easily dip its bill into the nest of its neighbor. On one tree, not 
twenty feet high or more than six or eight feet broad, I counted 



54 

twenty-two nests, all occupied. Acres of the ground also were 
so thickly covered that it was easy to step from nest to nest across 
a full acre. In one nest there might be three or four eggs ; in no 
instance more, and in its neighbor, youug ones in different stages 
of growth. To these last the old birds were continually coming 
with fish in their pouches, which they disgorge into the capacious 
maws of the young by both dropping the lower mandible, and the 
parent bird apparently contracting its pouch from the bottom so 
as to empty its contents into the pouch of its young. How won- 
derful the instinct that could find its own nest among so many 
thousand, and also adapt its selection of fish from day to day to 
the varying size of its young, — for I saw the old feeding young 
nearly as large as themselves, as well as those just hatched. 
Rather than climb the filthy trees, we took our eggs from those 
nests on the ground, gathering a water-pail full in a few minutes, 
always selecting the freshly laid ones, and might easily have 
gathered barrels of them. Securing eggs and studying their 
habits, we commenced securing birds. It was an easy matter to 
get three or four in a range and drop most or all at a shot. At 
every crack of the gun thousands would rise from the trees dark- 
ening the sun, but soon settle down again. After a while our 
continual firing so disconcerted them that they settled down by 
thousands on the water around the island, forming semi-circular 
ranks, with two or three feet between, as though platooned under 
leaders. For my own use, I brought away eighteen birds, repre- 
senting a series in every stage of plumage, from a fledgling just 
escaping from the egg to the mature bird. 

Fearing to leave Erwin longer in the broiling sun, we left the 
fascinating spot, and camped on a sand-bar at the mouth of St. 
Sebastian River, intending to spend at least three days in camp, 
as famous large alligators are found in the brackish water at the 
mouth of the stream. On a hummock within a mile a Squatter 
had succeeded in cultivating, with great success, a plantation of 
oranges, bananas, mangoes, etc. Not to be hindered in skinning 
my pelicans, I hired the Squatter's son to watch the mouth of the 
river for a large alligator. About 1 o'clock he came running to 
the camp, saying, "the biggest 'gator he ever saw was coming 
down the river." Calling Fred and Jim, and snatching up our 
guns and rifle, we ran to the end of the sand-bar, two or three 



55 

hundred feet away, and sure enough, judging from the distance 
between his snout and his eyes, he must have been at least fifteen 
feet in length. Just as we were launching the row-boat, to make 
sure of him, a scream from the camp hurried us back, to find 
Erwin was suddenly attacked with the severest chill I had yet 
seen him have. Greatly alarmed, I ordered all things packed as 
quickly as possible, and in an hour we were under sail with a stiff 
breeze, towing me in the row-boat that I might continue skinning 
my pelicans, as there was not room in the sail-boat with Erwin 
stretched at full length. The wind increasing, in less than an 
hour the tow-line broke, and before the sail-boat could be turned 
about, I was a full half-mile astern, without paddle or oar. Re- 
covered at last, darkness set in and we camped on a sand-bar. 
Rain setting in, Fred and Jim were well soaked in the course of 
the night, while I watched with Erwin in the tent without a wiuk 
of sleep. Next day the wind was dead ahead, and we were com- 
pelled to remain at camp till 4 o'clock P. M., when we started, 
and by 8 had reached Eau Gallie, where we had passed a night as 
we went out. Here I got Erwin into the shelter of a log hut, and 
as only thirty-five miles remained to Sand Point, I planned to send 
him on the morrow by another boat to that place, where he could 
have good nursing and a good bed, till Fred and I should arrive 
by the way of Banana River, a route twenty miles longer, but on 
which we hoped to get White Pelicans and shore birds ; but on 
awaking, a rainless Norther was blowing so furiously our boatman 
dared not go on. Wind-bound, I tried to think how I could turn 
the day to some account, having had to throw away all but four 
of my series of pelicans, on account of the hot sun ruining them 
before I could skin them, through my hasty departure from St. 
Sebastian. Learning that there was an Indian Mound over across 
the Indian River, three or four miles distant, I requested Jim to 
take me over in a boat, but he declined, saying, " no boat could 
live in such a sea." Another Cracker was willing to risk it for a 
dollar and a half. As the wind blew fortunately for crossing, 
though dangerously, I took my spade and trowel, and forbidding 
Fred to risk the voyage with me, I crossed over, the partially 
decked bow going under several times, but skilful management 
carried us across safely, though well drenched with the spray. 
Ascending the mound, about thirty feet in height, and well wooded 



56 

with wild orange growth, I succeeded in exhuming a perfect skel- 
eton, having its knees bent to its chin, and facing the south, — thus 
fulfilling at the last chance one of the things I promised Prof. 
Jeffries Wyman I would try to do. " It is an ill wind that blows 
nobody any good," but Erwin's sickness seriously interfered with 
my finishing up Florida according to my plans ; but as I could not 
see how I was responsible, I knew it was all right, and according 
to the plans of my Heavenly Father, who is " too wise to err and 
too good to be unkind." 

The Norther blowed out during the night and we started about 
eight for Sand Point direct, giving up for his sake Banana Eiver 
and the white pelicans. Before starting, I gave Erwin a morphine 
pill to alleviate the pain in his left side, the second time I had 
opened my medicine case during the trip — the first being as stated 
in the earlier part of the narrative, to give one of my phials of 
quinine to a man on Ten Mile Creek who camped near me one 
night with his wife and seven small children, two of them very 
sick with fever. We parted in the morning, but he sent me word 
by a cow-boy two weeks afterwards that my quinine saved the 
lives of his children. 

Having failed to secure a Wurdemann Heron at the Pelican 
rookery, I kept on the lookout for one, and during this day's sail 
espied a nest on the right bank, on a tall pine, which Jim declared 
belonged to a "Wurdemann. Sending him ashore with the rifle, 
he brought me one of the old birds and a half-fledged young he 
found under the nest. This specimen differs materially from the 
book measurements of the Great Blue Heron, Ardea herodias, 
but so little in plumage that I was still in doubt, and obliged to 
wait till I reached Washington to discuss the matter with Prof. 
Baird and test the find. Night overtaking us ten miles from Sand 
Point, we were forced to camp again on the sand just opposite the 
lower end of Merritt's Island. Pitching my tent on the windward 
side of a rousing fire, and making as nice a bed of palmetto leaves 
for Erwin inside as I could, I gave the tent up to him and was 
gratified to learn in the morning that he had slept well. To quote 
from a letter to my wife written on the sail-boat after leaving this 
camp : " this encouraged me to hope that after a sail of two hours 
I might yet have the gratification I had been all the week antici- 
pating of having a quiet Sabbath at Sand Point, and revisiting 



57 

that Sabbath School in the pine woods, whose acquaintance I had 
made on my outward trip, but the ' wind was contrary,' and so we 
add another day of holy time to the last seven Sabbaths unrecog- 
nized entirely as such, except in our tent, and two of those neces- 
sarily spent in travelling with an ox-team in Okechobee swamps, 
as the journal of my sojourn in the wilderness will explain. This 
journal, by the way, is wholly in my mind, as, till leaving Fort 
Capron last Monday, I have had no possible opportunity for 
writing except the few postals I have forwarded. Now I hope to 
send a postal almost daily, from the time I leave Jacksonville, and 
a letter weekly, giving daily particulars. This will keep you post- 
ed on my movements as you could not have been while I was out 
of civilization, among murderers and ex-Ku-Kluxans, for at this 
distance I dare write so, while had I written out my experience in 
the wilderness, and it had fallen into the hands of the wretches 
prowling through that region, it might have cost me my life. Yet 
I was well treated by every one, though I had to bear the most 
outrageous language respecting the ' Yanks.' I must confess I 
felt safer in having my revolver under my head and our guns be- 
tween us as we slept in the tent, according to Cromwell's injunc- 
tion to l trust in God and keep our powder dry.' /always 
sleep the foreside of the tent, as Fred is a sound sleeper, 
while / usually wake at the tread of a 'possum within ten feet of 
me ; still, into such a wild region you must go if you would study 
nature first hand instead of second. Hence the reason so few 
naturalists do anything more than study books and take the ob- 
servations of others and use them second-handed. To a great 
extent I have done so, but always to my great dissatisfaction, you 
know. I now feel as though I had a right to speak and lecture 
on some subjects pertaining to Natural History, ' ex-cathedra' 
authoritatively. I cannot but feel greatly pleased with my expe- 
rience for the last two months as well as grateful, I trust, for 
God's preserving care. We are just landing at Sand Point, at 11 
o'clock, A. M." 

Learning that a man living a mile in the interior had a spring 
sulky, I sent a lad for it to convey Erwin to a suitable lodging- 
place for the night, and on the next day to the steamer at Lake 
Harney, twenty-two miles distant, on which we proposed to sail 
down the St. John's to Jacksonville. Having thus disposed of 



58 

my sick companion, with gratitude for his convalescence, I chose 
a suitable camping-place for the afternoon and night, and, leaving 
Fred and our guide to take our luggage ashore, went myself in 
search of a suitable team to transfer us on the morrow to Lake 
Harney. Having secured a mule team, I hastened back to find 
the last package just piled in a piazza of a store, when a furious 
thunder shower broke upon us. During my absence the mail-boat 
had come up from Ft. Capron, bringing Dr. P. with three other 
passengers. It being Sunday, the proprietor of the store was 
absent, leaving for twelve men and all their luggage only the 
piazza, six feet by twenty, for shelter. Feeling it was more im- 
portant to preserve dry our luggage than ourselves, we gave to it 
the benefit of our blankets and overcoats and took our own chance 
unsheltered for the most part, with the probability of lying down 
at night drenched to the skin. Toward evening the rain ceased, 
and the proprietor of the store returning, he kindly offered us all 
lodging on his attic floor. My rubber blanket served to soften 
the, couch of hard pine, and either it or fatigue induced sound 
sleep, to find, on awaking in the morning, a cloudless sky. After 
cooking and eating our breakfast of coffee, pork and hard-tack, I 
commenced packing the cart, while Fred skinned three Shoveler 
ducks and a woodpecker he had shot before breakfast. This 
done, he lent his aid to the packing, but was soon interrupted at 
seeing a monstrous black hog run off with one of his duck-skins. 
Giving chase, he overtook it in a boggy swamp, but had hardly 
deposited the skin in a safe place, when the same or another hog 
seized another duck-skin, and in a trice chawed off one leg, thus 
spoiling it as a specimen for mounting. Will hog tribulations 
never cease, thought I. Our things packed, my final experience 
in "Cracker" honesty was realized. Jim demurred to my con- 
struction of the bargain I had made with him two weeks before, 
to take us to Sand Point in his sail-boat and there leave us, at so 
much per day, more or less number of days. He made out almost 
as large a bill for extras as the bargain called for, when there 
were to be no extras of any kind, unless providential ones, and 
such he could not say there had been. After an hour of abuse, 
with charges of Yankee meanness and some threatening of legal 
redress, he calmed down and took his pay at my first calculation. 
I then donated him my camp cooking utensils that had cost me 



59 

about five dollars and were uninjured, supposing I could not 
possibly have any further use for them. 

At 3 P. M. we bade farewell to Indian River, having a boy of 
twelve for our teamster, who proved to be no exception to an adult 
"Cracker's" thriftlessness, for when we camped at dark in the 
woods, he had no cooking apparatus. However, boiling our coffee 
in a lard can and our eggs in a peach can, and after drinking the 
coffee, our hominy in the lard can for breakfast in the morning, as 
it could be handled cold, we lay down on the ground and looking 
sky-ward went to sleep, as often before, counting the stars. Ris- 
ing at 3.30 in the morning, I ended my camping career of fifty-one 
nights, and exchanged my butternut hunting-dress and blue-flannel 
shirt for broadcloth and linen, and donned my beaver in place of 
the worn-out straw-hat which I left sticking upon a stake. 

At 9 A. M. we reached the steamer Volusia, gratified to find 
Erwin comfortably established on board, and at 2 P. M. sailed 
away from " Crackerdom" down the St. John's. Sharing a state- 
room with Capt. B. — previous and subsequent to the war, light- 
house keeper at Cape Canaveral — I learned from him some inter- 
esting particulars of his experience during the war. On the 
secession of Florida he was ordered by the State authority to put 
out his light. He obeyed, and more. In the darkness of the 
night and the retiracy of the surroundings, he took down the lan- 
tern and everything movable, and transferred all by a mule-cart to 
a lonely spot four miles distant, and safely hiding them, kept the 
secret during the war. At its close, when a U. S. vessel came 
down the coast to re-light the lanterns, he was inquired of for the 
equipments. Leading the officer to the hiding-place, he brought 
all out to light uninjured, and for his discretion, was recommended 
by the officer as a suitable person to continue in charge of the 
Light, and was successful in receiving the appointment from 
Washington. He also informed me that early in the war Jefferson 
Davis and his Cabinet entrusted him with keeping concealed in 
the inlet near the Cape, as large a vessel as possible, to take any 
of them, in case of disaster, to Nassau, under British dominion, 
being assured, if once there, they would be protected according 
to the Mason and Slidell precedent. During the last year of the 
war the Union gun-boats found their way into the Indian Rivei 
and captured the vessel, with much other contraband material 



60 

that had been accumulating as the safest place on the coast. On 
the surrender of Lee, and the separation of Davis and his Cabinet, 
at their last meeting in the second story of the bank buildiug at 
Washington, Wilkes County, Georgia, each strove to reach, by 
different routes, the rendezvous in charge of Capt. B., to make 
his escape to Nassau. Mr. Davis — taking his family, who had 
been boarding for some time four miles out of Washington — fol- 
lowed the route leading through Taliafero County, and passing 
across the very plantation where I spent the year 1841 teaching a 
private school, was captured a few miles further south. Breck- 
enridge alone found his way unmolested to the appointed rendez- 
vous, and was enabled to escape to Nassau by Capt. B.'s furnishing 
him with an open row-boat of large size, which he had fitted with 
a jury-mast, Capt. B. showing me a gold dollar hanging at his 
watch-chain, which he said Mr. Breckenridge gave him as he 
stepped aboard the boat, as the only remuneration he could offer 
him for his kindness. 

On our second day's sail down the river, at a wooding-up place, 
Capt. B. drew my attention to a woman standing in a doorway, 
with a child in her arms, and said, " That is the wife of Mr. Lang, 
that was murdered a few weeks ago in the neighborhood of ten- 
mile creek you have just escaped from. As the boat was about 
to start, I failed of an opportunity to learn definite particulars 
from her of the terrible tragedy, but this seems the proper place 
in my narrative to give the denouement. Less than a year after- 
wards I found the following in the Boston Transcript, but by 
whom written I know not, nor, through correspondence with true 
men in the vicinity of Fort Capron, have I been able to obtain 
other than conflicting accounts of the arrests and trials. 

"Now that spiritualism is being brought so prominently for- 
ward, it is interesting to learn, from the Chicago Tribune, that an 
ingenious attorney in Florida was the first person to discover a 
practical value in it. His client, Tom Drawdy, was accused of 
murdering one Lang, and the jury was composed of eight colored 
and four ignorant white men. There was no doubt of the murder ; 
there was no flaw in the evidence. But the counsel found one. 
He maintained that no proof of Lang's death had been given, and, 
in all probability, he was still hiding to obtain revenge. This made 
a commotion, but the main argument was yet to come. The gen- 
tlemen of the jury had heard that spirits were very common all 



61 

over the North ; that some had even been heard of in St. Augus- 
tine. Supposing the jury brought in a verdict of guilty and hanged 
an innocent man, what could they expect but that his spirit would 
haunt them through life, appearing with staring eyes and clammy 
tongue, the death damp on his hands and the horrors of the tomb 
round about him? Of course they must take the responsibility, 
and they did, by acquitting Tom Drawdy forthwith. Here, there- 
fore, is the first authenticated instance of the practical value of 
spiritualism, and it may be added that that value was of a dubious 
sort. 



JUSTICE IN THE SOUTH. 

To the Editor of the Transcript: — In the Transcript of the 14th 
inst. was an account of the trial of a man in Florida for murder, 
who was acquitted in the face of the evidence, by a spiritualistic 
dodge. I was in east Florida last winter, near the scene of this 
crime, and as the affair illustrates the life and manners of mauy 
Southern States, I will give the story as I heard it. 

Lang, the victim, was an honest, industrious German, who had 
made for himself a home on the Indian River, where he was living 
with his wife. He was a man of education and a naturalist. His 
neighbors were Floridians, usually called "Crackers;" ignorant 
and lazy, and hating Yankees. They envied Mr. Lang the pos- 
session of a better plantation than they had, the result of his own 
industry, and determined to drive him away. So they got up a 
story that he had stolen cattle. As in the West the charge of 
being a horse thief is the most fatal that can be brought against a 
man, so in Florida, where cattle and hogs constitute the sole prop- 
erty of most of the Crackers, to charge a man with killing his 
neighbor's cattle is to put him out of the protection of such law 
as may exist. 

Findiug that they could not drive Lang away, they hired the 
Drawdys, a desperate family of ruffians, to kill him, and the deed 
was performed with the treachery belonging to that class. Two 
of them went to Lang's house and asked for dinner ; it was given 
them, and they requested their host to set them across the river in 
his boat. He went with them for the purpose, but did not return. 
His wife heard a shot tired soon after the party left the house, and 
as her husband did not return she went to look for him. The boat 
was found on the other side of the river with stains of blood upon 
it, but nothing was ever seen of Lang. The people in the neigh- 
borhood took no steps to bring the murderers to justice, and Mrs. 
Lang applied to the Governor of the State, who sent a posse from 
Tallahasse, who it appears arrested the men about three months 
after the murder was committed. It seems they have escaped 
punishment, as they have many times before for lesser crimes. 



62 

Without affirming or denying the truth of these statements in 
their fullest extent, I am assured from all I can learn that Mr. J., 
the father-in-law and reputed instigator of the murder, was shot 
dead in his tracks by the sheriff while resisting arrest, as he had 
assured me he would be, rather than be arrested ; that Tom died in 
the State's prison not long after incarceration, and that his col- 
league in the murderous affair was shot by the guard for insubor- 
dination in the chain-gang;. 

Leaving the steamer at Tocoi I proceeded by a mule railroad to 
the old town of St. Augustine, bidding good-bye to my compan- 
ions Fred and Erwin, who continued on to Jacksonville and thence 
to New England by steamer. My familiarity with quaint old 
towns in Europe, hundreds of years ante-dating the settlement of 
St. Augustine, prevented my realizing the novel sensation so gen- 
erally depicted by tourists on first beholding its dilapidated walls 
and coquina-stone Castle. A walk before breakfast on the long 
sea-wall and a ramble around the Fort through its moat, and 
across the draw-bridge, with a hasty inspection of the Cemetery 
and the Old Cathedral and Square, satisfied my curiosity, and I 
spent the forenoon, as the mule-car did not return to Tocoi till 1 
P. M., in searching for objects of natural history in the suburban 
lagoons. Taking the Pilatka steamer for Jacksonville at Tocoi 
I re-admired the remarkable river whose very source I had found 
near Fort Drum at the northern boundary of Alpatiokee Flats, and 
had jumped across, but now widening to two miles in extent. 
Conversing with a stranger on board, about three o'clock of the 
second day, and enquiring for Jacksonville time, he displayed an 
old-fashioned silver moveable-cased watch, remarking, it was the 
best time-keeper on board, though a relic of his grandfather's day. 
Telling him I could match it as a time-keeper, I felt in my pants 
watch pocket for a silvei'-edged lepine watch that I had owned for 
more than thirty years, and which, then an old watch, was given 
to me by a watch-repairer to replace one I had left with him to 
repair, but, through careless exposure at his window had, during 
his temporary absence from the room, been grabbed by a sneak- 
thief with half a dozen others on the same rack, and successfully 
secured. But lo ! the pocket was empty. I recalled changing my 
double-time lever-watch the second morning before at St. Augus- 
tine from my money-belt where I had securely carried it through 



63 

all my swamp experience, to my vest watch-pocket, and putting 
the old lepine without a chain into my pants pocket. A little re- 
flection convinced me that it had slipped out while gathering 
specimens in the suburbs of St. Augustine. So soon, therefore, 
as I arrived at Jacksonville, I wrote to the postmaster at St. Au- 
gustine, explaining my loss and requesting him to send his clerk 
to certain points in the lagoon I designated, offering him a reward 
of five dollars if he should be successful in finding it and would 
send it to my home address in Massachusetts by mail, carelessly 
neglecting to mention the numbers on the case and the works of 
the watch for identification, though I had them with me in my 
pocket-book, and also at my home. On arriving at my home a 
month later, almost immediately my wife handed me a letter from 
the postmaster for explanation. He sent his clerk as requested, 
but he found nothing. During the evening, however, he overheard 
a negro man say his son had found a watch that day in the moat 
of the castle and obtained his consent to give it to him if I would 
send on the numbers of my lost watch and the five dollai-s reward 
if the numbers I should send identified it. Remembering my tramp 
through the moat I hesitated not to send the money with the num- 
bers, and in due time received my watch in. good order. 

At Jacksonville I disabused the minds of those who had told 
me when I started up the St. John's, that after a residence of 
years in Florida they had concluded that Lake Okechobee was a 
myth, and advised them to look out for the report of the explor- 
ing party who had circumnavigated it. Shipping home my col- 
lection of beasts, birds, reptiles, fishes, etc., by the shortest route, 
I made a detour from Jacksonville to the south-west and north- 
east sections of Georgia between which I had spent the years from 
'38 to '42 as teacher. The little frontier village of '38 in the 
Lower Creek Indian Country of hardly more than forty log houses, 
where, at the age of nineteen, I made my debut as Principal of a 
school in which I had pupils in a, b, c, as well as in advanced 
Latin and Greek, sending two of the latter class to college at the 
end of my first year of instruction, had become a municipality of 
five thousand inhabitants. The Creeks had, after hard fighting, 
been removed west of the Mississippi within five years of my loca- 
tion in the hamlet, and, with the exception of a few individuals, 
the character of the people partook of the worst elements of a 



64 

frontier settlement. Seventy miles distant from any stage route, 
my only way of reaching it at that time was by an old negro and 
his mule-cart, making the journey in two days and camping at the 
foot of a pine tree at night. My mail came once a week on horse- 
back, the original star route I imagine, and all the appointments 
pertaining to civilization were of the most primitive stamp, such 
as New England had outgrown a hundred years before. A conch- 
shell blown at the Court House in the centre of the village square, 
for it was the shire hamlet of the county, notified me on the morn- 
ing of my first Sunday that a strolling Methodist preacher would 
hold services in the Court House at 11 o'clock. Repairing from 
my room just outside the village to the place of worship, I passed 
in the open square two faro tables where peripatetic professional 
gamblers were fleecing a much larger gathering than I found in- 
side the Court House. The preacher had his own bible and hymn 
book and led all the services, giving out each hymn line by line, 
and starting the tune himself, at each break. During the first 
prayer, I heard just outside a sudden out-burst of loud talking 
mingled with fearful oaths, which made me open my eyes, but 
seeing neither minister nor worshippers in the least disturbed, I 
composed myself and concluded there was no disrespect intended 
for us. Before the sermon was half through the outside rabble 
had matured a plan for a horse-race, which was kept up with the 
usual accompaniment of swearing and disputing till long after 
our services were ended. Longer experience in the community 
taught me that the occasional religious services enjoyed by a 
moiety of the citizens was not objected to by the gamblers and 
horse-racers, so long as they were not interfered with in their 
mode of enjoying the Sabbath. Enquiring for some of my old 
pupils of thirty-six years before, I found the war had spared a 
few, but not one of half a dozen or more that I met recognized 
me, so changed was I from an almost beardless youth of nineteen 
to an old man of fifty-five. 

In northeast Georgia, where, for nearly a year, I was both 
instructor and colleague of an aged minister in 1841, 1 was equally 
unrecognized by all who had known me in either capacity. It 
was in this region that I attained my majority and cast my first 
vote, on which was the name of Alexander H. Stephens, in his 
first candidacy for Congress. The intimacy we formed during the 



65 

year I dwelt in his vicinity was never broken, but renewed from 
time to time, as circumstances brought us together, — the last time 
but a few months before his decease in 1882. 

Desirous of visiting the site of my last school-house in Georgia, 
I left the cars at a station within seven miles of it, and borrowing 
a horse from one of my old pupils, now a lawyer of middle age, 
I essayed to find it. My route required me to cross the same 
stream twice. At the first crossing I forded the stream by gath- 
ering my limbs crosswise upon the pommel of the saddle, but 
found the second, by my recollection of its bed, more than swim- 
ming to my horse, with too swift a current to think of stemming, 
and so turned aside for the night to stop with the father of my 
pupil, who with his wife still occupied the same plantation of 
3,800 acres I used to visit in '41. True Southern hospitality 
welcomed me as of yore, though despoiled of everything but the 
naked land by the exigencies of the war. Talking over the sit- 
uation with the old gentleman, he related the following war inci- 
dents : One morning one of his many negroes accosted him, 
" Massa, we's all free." "Ah, how so?" " Massa Lincoln says 
so." Surprised at the statement, and knowing the blacks always 
had information of important movements at the North sometimes 
days in advance of the whites, the master mounted his horse and 
galloped to town, six miles, to learn that no one there knew what 
the statement meant. In the afternoon news came by the mail 
from Augusta of Lincoln's Proclamation freeing the slaves, and 
the master galloped back to his plantation to inform his negroes 
that Massa Lincoln's saying so had nothing to do with their free- 
dom, as they were all under Jefferson Davis, and ordered them 
to their work as usual. Two years subsequently the master was 
again surprised by the same old negro saying one morning, 
" Massa, now we's free for sartin." "Ah, how's that?" " Lee's 
surrendered Richmond, and Jeff Davis has fled !" Again gallop- 
ing to town, no such news had reached there, but at 10 o'clock 
the mail confirmed it, and galloping back, the master blew the 
conch-shell that brought all his negroes in a trice from the most 
distant parts of the plantation into his yard, when he said to the 
scores before him, from the very spot in the piazza where we were 
sitting: "It's a fact, Lee's surrendered; you are all free, and 
note you must look out for your dinner." This last announcement 



66 

to poor dependents that had never in their lives, from the youngest 
conscious child to the gray-haired old men and women, ever had 
a thought about providing their dinner, the regular cook of the 
plantation dealing out their rations at the appointed time each day 
all prepared, so took them aback that not a shout was heard or 
the wag of a tongue, but on the contrary, their very countenances 
of jet black grew pale with consternation. After leaving them 
to their reflections for half an hour, the master blew the conch- 
shell again and told them he had been anticipating this result, so 
giving them a dinner, he related the following plan as the best 
thing for him and them, — he being left with nothing but his land, 
stock, and farming implements, as Confederate money would at 
once be worthless : The oldest married negro could first choose 
twenty acres of land in any part of his thirty-eight hundred, and 
move his cabin on to it and make a home for himself ; then the 
next oldest married man, and so on, and then the unmarried could 
make their choice. He would also let each have a mule and a 
plough, and the use of his gin-house and cotton-press, and for 
his own support the}* should pay him a certain per cent, of what 
they got for their crop ; or every one could quit the plantation 
and look out for himself. With the exception of one young 
unmarried man, all accepted his offer and moved their dozen or 
more cabins on to the land of their choice, and at the time of his 
narrating the circumstances to me, ten years afterwards, every 
family was on the place of their first choosing, with hardly an 
exception, and everything had gone prosperously with him, and 
for his own sake he would not have slavery restored for all his 
plantation. A second visit, eight years afterwards, to the same 
plantation produced the same testimony from the considerate and 
humane old master. 

Expressing my approbation of a beautiful peacock strutting in 
the yard, the generous old wife said to me, " Catch it and mount 
it for your Museum at Brown University, as a present from me.' ( 
In five minutes its life was forfeited to the interests of science. 

Having promised a gratuitous lecture in the village in the even- 
ing, I mounted my horse after dinner to return, a young man 
accompanying me a mile to the creek I had forded the day before, 
but the rain during the night had swollen it to swimming and also 
overflowed its banks on either skle for more than a hundred feet, 



67 

Observing on the right a high staked fence, extending within 
twenty feet of the other side, with the top rail jnst above the 
rushing stream with overhanging branches, I gave my horse to the 
young man to take back to its owner at his convenience, and 
mounting the fence, with the incumbrance of the peacock with its 
five-foot tail and fifteen-pound weight, and a tall silk hat, I walked 
the sharp edge of the rail by the aid of the slender overhead 
branches, thanks to the acrobatic practice of my youth, till I 
reached the end of the fence, when, tossing the fowl as far towards 
the shore as I could, and holding my watch and purse above my 
head, I followed, landing in water only waist-deep, instead of 
neck-deep, as I feared. My companion on the opposite side, see- 
ing me safe across, swung his hat and shouted, "A Yankee for 
anything and forever!" Replacing my watch and shouldering my 
bird, I plodded the live miles to the village, arriving just in time 
to change my wet underclothes for dry, but for the want of another 
suit of outer garments was obliged to lecture in wet pants. My? 
neighbors and pupils of a generation before were, however, well 
pleased to hear the voice of their old friend and teacher. 

Learning that an old college-mate was residing in the vicinity 
of Toccoa Falls in northern Georgia. I made a detour of two 
hundred miles by rail to call upon him. These Falls are of won- 
derful beaut} 7 , and, with the present railroad facilities, are attract- 
ing hundreds of visitors annually- 

From Toccoa, Georgia, to Charlotte County, Virginia, 1 ac- 
complished by rail what took me by stage through the same towns 
in December, 1841, from Monday noon of continuous travel, night 
and day, with the exception of Sunday, to Thursday noon of the 
week following. I was the only through passenger, and usually 
at night the only one, so that my trunk was taken inside the stage 
for fear of robbers, and filling the space between the seats, made 
me a more comfortable couch. The rivers were all crossed by 
ferries, and one night, the lights of the stage having gone out, the 
new driver missed the path leading to the ferry and found out his 
mistake when a sudden wheeling around of the horses upset the 
stage within twenty feet of the bank, waking me out of a sound 
sleep. Re-lighting the uninjured lamp by matches furnished by 
myself, we surveyed our surroundings, and loosening the jaded 
horses, shouted for help. Soon the negro ferrymen on the opposite 



68- 

side replied, and coming to the proper landing several rods up 
stream, soon righted matters for ns. At another ferry the rope 
broke when nearly across, but as it was in the daytime, we soon 
caught by the overhanging branches and pulled ourselves up 
stream to the right landing-place. 

The cars leaving me in Virginia five miles from the nearest of 
my old school-mates of 1832, I engaged a horse for two days' 
riding. When brought for me to mount, the bridle had no two 
parts alike, one stirrup was of wood suspended by a rope and the 
other of iron suspended by leather, and the horse himself was 
evidently a remnant of the cavalry of ten years previous, or more 
probably of the artillery or an ambulance corps. To my remon- 
strance, I was told it was the best in the neighborhood, — a most 
painful contrast to the blooded animals, with gorgeous trappings, 
I used to ride on the fox-hunts forty-two years before in the same 
region. Arrived at the door of the residence of my school-mate, 
she herself appeared, so unchanged in all the intervening time I 
could not help grasping her hand with a school-boy's familiarity, 
and tightening my grasp the more she tried to escape from it, 
while I was parleying for a recognition from her. At length, 
propriety suggested my rudeness, as she evidently began to be 
alarmed, and letting go my hold, I asked her the leading question, 
whether she could not recall events of forty-two years previous. 
"Oh, dear, am I so old," was her only answer, with a quick, 
' ' but who are you ?" "I am the little Yankee boy of the log 
school-house on your father's plantation ;" and then she herself 
seized both my hands involuntarily, and it was my turn to leave 
the unclasping to her. The next moment tears came to her eyes, 
with the sad exclamation, "Oh, that you should find us all in 
such changed circumstances from what you knew us in our child- 
hood and would have known us up to the war. That hack of a 
horse you just rode up on and its rigging is a fair sample of how 
the war left us, — my husband, a physician, and our two sons 
returning from the ranks on the surrender of Lee with not a cent 
between us all, except twenty-five dollars I had contrived to secure 
to myself, and which my husband took to Petersburg to purchase 
me a calico dress, the first of any kind I had purchased in all 
the four years. In yonder shed is our carriage, that, for the 
want of suitable horses and harness, has not been harnessed since 



69 

the war, and every luxury of the kind forborne, with no prospect 
of the times being any better in my day." Such and much more 
was the sad tale I listened to during the three hours I stopped, 
before proceeding ten miles further to the residence of her twin 
sister, and two miles further to the residence of her brother, near 
the paternal mansion, where, during their youth, every luxury 
abounded, as well as at their several homes, till the exigencies of 
war made Virginia the greatest sufferer of all the seceding States. 

Spending only one day and night between the three families, 1 
returned to the station and hastened on to Washington, to find, 
to my great disappointment, that I had not after ..all my effort 
secured a Wurdemaun Heron. Subsequent study of the species, 
however, proves my specimen not to be the long-known Blue 
Heron, but a variety now lately determined to be the Ardea wardi 
or Florida Blue Heron. 

Leaving Washington after spending one night, I reached my 
home on the evening of the last day of April, in a snowstorm that 
had been unintermitting during the day. 

The following extract from a detailed report of the New Orleans 
Times-Democrat Exploring Expedition through the Florida Ever- 
glades in 1884 will make a fitting close to our narrative. 

" When we reached White Water Bay we had accomplished all 
we promised to do, and more than any man or men ever were able 
to do before. We are the first party of white men who ever pene- 
trated the Northern Glades, and the first who ever started from 
the southern shore of Lake Okeechobee and came out at the Gulf 
of Mexico through Shark's River, without diverging a mile to the 
east or west from their due south course. 

"In conclusion I sum up my observations of the Everglades in 
a few words : 

"It is a vast marsh, interspersed with thousands of islands 
small in extent, and with few exceptions completely inundated, 
even at the time we explored them, which was during a very dry 
season. On the islands that were out of water there was but a 
few inches of soil covering the rocks. In my opinion, their drain- 
age is utterly impracticable, and, even if it were practicable, the 
reward for such an undertaking would be lands that could be util- 
ized for no other purpose than as a grazing ground for stock. 
They are nothing more nor less than a vast and useless marsh, 
and such they will remain for all time to come, in all probability. 

" It would not be possible to build, or maintain if built, a tele- 
graph line along the route traversed by us, which statement is 



70 " 

made in reply to numerous inquiries as to the feasibility of such 
an enterprise. 

A. P. WILLIAMS." 

I have designedly omitted in the foregoing narrative scientific 
names of specimens and specific descriptions, intending it only 
as an account of the adventures of a Naturalist Collector in the 
Everglades. 

J. W. P. JENKS. 



